They were soon back—the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.
"my! " said mrs. peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to the stove.
mrs. hale stood examining the clothes the woman who was being detained in town had said she wanted.
"wright was close! " she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. "i think maybe that's why she kept so much to herself. i s'pose she felt she couldn't do her part; and then, you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively—when she was minnie foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. but that—oh, that was twenty years ago."
with a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. she looked up at mrs. peters and there was something in the other woman's look that irritated her.
"she don't care," she said to herself. "much difference it makes to her whether minnie foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl." plzz