“Mary! You’re wanted.”
Quickly, obediently, a drooping, crestfallen figure of infancy
appeared and stood in the sunlight that poured through the doorway,
flung from a wide open window far back in the room she came from. It
irradiated the ground she stood on and the filmy mass of cobwebs over
her head; it could not light her up, any more than the bogey in the
fields which flaps lank and dull in the full glare of noontide. And
this was a living child, rendered by what means he knew not,
unsusceptible, like any scarecrow, of light and joy. The depressed red
bow on the top of her head looked as if it had not been untied for
weeks. The hem of her skirt was partially torn off, it was far too
long for her, and she had fastened, or some one had fastened it up for
her, clumsily with a piece--two pieces of string. It showed a dirty
pair of knickerbockers.
She stood, waiting patiently, blinking a little, hideous, shapeless,
piteous. Gertrude said nothing but looked from one to the other,
comparing them as it were, enjoying herself quietly, like a rough in
the front row of the pit.