She paused a moment on the threshold looking round, and I saw
that she had a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand,
and that her feet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent
in her coarse stuff petticoat, and the hand which held the shawl
together was brown and dirty. More I did not see: for,
supposing her to be a neighbour stolen in, now that the house was
quiet, to get some milk for her child or the like, I took no
farther heed of her. I turned to the fire again and plunged into
my thoughts.
But to get to the hearth where the goodwife was fidgeting the
woman had to pass in front of me; and as she passed I suppose
that she stole a look at me from under her shawl. For just when
she came between me and the blaze she uttered a low cry and
shrank aside--so quickly that she almost stepped on the hearth.
The next moment she turned her back to me, and was stooping
whispering in the housewife's ear. A stranger might have thought
that she had trodden on a hot ember.
But another idea, and a very strange one, came into my mind; and
I stood up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but
something in her height, her shape, the pose of her head hidden
as it was by her shawl, seemed familiar.
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