She speaks darkly about herself. She has brothers and sisters better off than she is, somewhere, who don't want to speak to her when she meets them on the street!
And she speaks darkly about the lady she lives with whom she calls Mis' Snoble. "When Lisa Schmit from the grocery came to play with me, she shoo'd her off with the broom," she said.
Only yesterday she appeared at her gate for a brief moment to say she could not come out and play. "Mis' Snoble's feelin' right up to the mark today; we're goin' to beat rugs an' wash winders."
But this morning as she pauses on her way home from the grocery, her communication to Izzy and Emmy Lou at Izzy's gate is of different import. "Mis' Snoble's not feelin' up to the mark today. Come in with me an' ask her an' maybe she'll let me come an' play."
Go in with Minnie! To Mrs. Noble! Emmy Lou's hand went into Izzy's, as she for one gazed at Minnie appalled!
Yet Minnie's face is eager and her eyes implore. Her plaits are tied with calico, and her face behind its eagerness is thin. Izzy looses Emmy Lou's hand, even as she draws it away, and, behold, his hand now is in one of Minnie's, and Emmy Lou's is in the other. They are going with her to ask Mrs. Noble.
Through Minnie's gate, around by the side pavement, in at the kitchen door, through a hall and to another door. Mrs. Noble has not appeared yet with her broom to shoo them away, but she might!
Minnie pushed this door open and led the way in—wonderful, brave Minnie!—but Izzy and Emmy Lou paused in the doorway.
Mrs. Noble, spare and upright in her chair, crocheting, looked up. Her eyes, having swept up and down Minnie, traveled on to Emmy Lou and Izzy, then returned coldly, as it were, to her work.
"Kitchen's red up," from Minnie eagerly and hopefully in what one supposed must be the language of over the river; "been to the grocery, an' the sink's clean."