Nothing answered in
the girl's eyes to her words; there was no lighting up of desire or
curiosity, however restrained; she stood like one indifferent or
uncomprehending.
"She's awful deef!" cried a new voice from the doorway. "She ain't that
scared. She's sarcy enough, sometimes."
A woman, middle-aged or more, stood on the rough, slanting door-stone.
She had bare feet, in coarse calf-skin slippers, stringy petticoats
differing only from the child's in length, sleeves rolled up to the
shoulders, no neck garniture,--not a bit of anything white about her.
Over all looked forth a face sharp and hard, that might have once been
good-looking, in a raw, country fashion, and that had undoubtedly always
been, what it now was, emphatically Yankee-smart. An inch-wide stripe of
black hair was combed each way over her forehead, and rolled up on her
temples in what, years and years ago, used to be called most
appropriately "flat curls,"--these fastened with long horn side-combs.
Beyond was a strip of desert,--no hair at all for an inch and a half
more toward the crown; the rest dragged back and tied behind with the
relentless tightness that gradually and regularly, by the persistence of
years, had accomplished this peculiar belt of clearing.
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