He watched her read it. He watched the colour go out of her face exactly as it had gone out of the captain's in the yard, and he thought, with a small sick jolt, *then she did not know.* Nobody could put that look on. It started at the mouth and went all through her, so that for a moment she looked older, and very tired, and not like a great lady at all.
She put one gloved finger on the word in brackets.
"You did not see this word," she said. "You guessed it."
"I saw the shape of it, my lady. The lips close, then open wide, then the tongue." He hesitated. "It might have been another word. But I do not know another word that fits."
"Forty pair, with the bolts." She said it under her breath, and he read it. "Cooperage."
"Mr. Annet the cooper has been working nights this fortnight," Jory said. "Everyone in Fore Street knows it. They said the brig wanted new hoops for her water casks. A great many."
She looked up at him then, sharply. "You have thought about this."
"I have thought about it since six o'clock, my lady. I could not stop."
She sat back and said nothing for a long moment. The little girl, Loveday, came and leaned against Jory's arm and looked at the slate with her lips moving, trying to read the long words. He put his arm round her without thinking.
"Do you know what this means?" said Lady Ormerod at last. "If it is true?"
"It means the brig is going to the coast of Africa, my lady. For people."
He saw her flinch at the plainness of it. Then she lifted her chin.