shadows; they did not mean to yield
to the coming dawn. The hills, the massed woods, the mist opposed
their immovable front, scornfully. Margret did not notice the silent
contest until she reached the lane. The girl Lois, sitting in her
cart, was looking, attentive, at the slow surge of the shadows, and the
slower lifting of the slanted rays.

"T' mornin' comes grand here, Miss Marg'et!" she said, lowering her
voice.

Margret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray and
cold, like her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart; some
strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the
world,--some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the
quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when
Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and
settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a
start, Margret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly
by it down the road. 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 colours had run madly into each
other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with relentless
tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched
as it was, had a snug, cosy look; the masses of vegetables, green and
crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow
of colour, Margret 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. 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?