Once, looking at the girl, she
thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she
arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly
into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a
relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart,
patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables,
green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to
the glow of color, Margaret noticed, wondering if it were accidental.
Looking up, she saw the girl's brown eyes fixed on her face. They were
singularly soft, brooding brown.
"Ye'r' goin' to th' mill, Miss Marg'et?" she asked, in a half whisper.
"Yes. You never go there now, Lois?"
"No, 'm."
The girl shuddered, and then tried to hide it in a laugh. Margaret
walked on beside her, her hand on the cart's edge. Somehow this
creature, that Nature had thrown impatiently aside as a failure, so
marred, imperfect, that even the dogs were kind to her, came strangely
near to her, claimed recognition by some subtile instinct.
Partly for this, and partly striving to forget herself, she glanced
furtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wondering
what impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that was
looking out so intently through the brown eyes.
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