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.
Margret 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. What artist sense had she,--what could she know--the
ignorant huckster--of the eternal laws of beauty or grandeur?
Nothing. Yet something in the girl's face made her think that
these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive to her,--real;
that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, lay closer to
Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of these
earnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brown
mould. It was an idle fancy; Margret laughed at herself for it,
and turned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed
with such eager eyes.
The light was conquering. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue
crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of
light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked
there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple.
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