Her lower lip hung a
little, but only a little, loosely. She looked neither at earth nor
at sky, but straight at the two belligerents, with whose bloodthirsty
play she was obliged to interfere at intervals. She held in her lap
a doll made of a roll of brown paper, with a waist and a neck
indicated by gingham strings. Pieces of ravelled rope were pinned on
the head part, but there was no other attempt to assist the
imagination. She raised her dull eyes; they seemed to hold in their
depths a knowledge of aloofness from the happier world, and their
dumb sorrow pierced your very heart, while it gave you an
irresistible sense of aversion. She smiled, but the smile only gave
you a new thrill; it was vacant and had no joy in it, rather an
uncommunicable grief. As she sat there with her battered doll, she
was to the superficial eye repulsive, but to the eye that pierces
externals she was almost majestic in her mysterious loneliness and
separation.
The steam-whistle of a factory near by blew a long note for twelve
o'clock, and she rose from her bench, took the children by the hand,
and dragged them, kindly but firmly, up the steps into the kitchen.
She laid her doll under a towel, but, with a furtive look at the boy,
rolled it in a cloth and tucked it under her skirt at the waist-line.
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