As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the
gate a kick and passed through. The women were more contrasting.
To them the sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace,
a treachery, as the case might be.
The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts
tucked up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without
looking, giving it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when
the white imprint drew from her an exclamation in language not too
refined. She went to the green bank, sat down and rubbed herself
in the grass, cursing the while.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor.
The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the
surgeon recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman
South. Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning
unpleasantly reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a
tree which had caused her parent's death and Winterborne's losses.
She walked and thought, and not recklessly; but her preoccupation
led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it
with her arm.
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