"And take you into the house?"
"An' take me into the house," I repeated doggedly.
Her glance brushed me from head to foot, while I writhed under it, "I wonder why you don't wash your face," she observed in her cool, impersonal manner.
I fell back a step and stared defiantly at the ground.
"I ain't got any water," I answered, driven to bay.
"I think if you'd wash it ever so hard and brush your hair flat on your head, you'd look very nice—for a boy," she remarked. "I like your eyes because they're blue, and I have a dog with blue eyes exactly like yours. Did you ever see a blue-eyed dog? He's a collie. But your hair stands always on end and it's the colour of straw."
"It growed that way," I returned. "You can't get it to be flat. Ma has tried."
"I bet I could," she rejoined, and caught at the old woman's hand. "This is my mammy an' her name is Euphronasia, an' she's got blue eyes an' golden hair," she cried, beginning to dance up and down in her red shoes.
"Gawd erlive, lamb, I'se ez black ez a crow's foot," protested the old woman, at which the dance of the red shoes changed into a stamp of anger.
"You aren't!—You aren't! You've got blue eyes an' golden hair!" screamed the child. "I won't let you say you haven't,—I won't let anybody say you haven't!"