‘What’s the matter?’ he said, smiling. His eyelids had dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city creatures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating Ursula, and said, with curious amiable, jeering warmth:

‘What she warnt? — eh?’ An odd smile writhed his lips.

Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids.

‘To give you a chair — that — with the label on it,’ he said, pointing.

The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curious hostility in male, outlawed understanding between the two men.

‘What’s she warnt to give it US for, guvnor,’