She lifted up a reedy voice:
“Madelaine!” she cried harshly.
A door opened, and there stepped through the opened way a lean girl of fourteen, the drudge that is called maid-of-all-work.
“Yes, madame,” said Madelaine, or what was the half-starved embodiment of Madelaine, her long bare arms thrust out through her turned-up sleeves, her dingy black dress a world too short for her and showing bare legs, her stockingless feet in down-at-heels boots that had already served another owner.
The child held herself insolently. Indeed, the old woman Snacheur had beaten her the night before, falling upon the slender shoulders with a stout stick; and for the first time the girl had flown at the brutality and struck back—the old woman shuffling backwards into a corner of the room before the onslaught, retreating in sullen surprise, wiping a long tingling nose with the back of a sinewy hand as the pain sent the tears trickling down the runnels of her withered cheeks. Through scowling evil eyes she had realized that the harsh thrashings of these poor lean shoulders were at an end—that the four years of grim domination since she had taken this poor outcast child to be her drudge were gone—and that whatever cruelty of starvation and neglect her miserly wits might still impose upon her hungry years, the rod had fallen from her gloating fingers and the blue weals upon the poor thin shoulders were painted with the hellish brand of her cruel hand for the last time. The child was springing up into starved youth—nay, girlhood was almost gone—indeed, within the gaunt body lurked some strange hint of womanhood, smiling forth even from the starved body of this hireling thing.
“Yes, madame,” said Madelaine.
The brooding old woman came back out of the humiliating past:
“There are halfpence on the table,” she said—“go and buy milk—and see that the thieving beast gives you full measure—there was no milk in the neck of the bottle last night—he is a scoundrel—unless you drank it on the way and are yourself the thief.”
Madelaine shrugged her lean shoulders, and gathered up the halfpence. As she left the room the old woman called after her:
“And see that you are back before the darkness—there will be no light to show you to bed.”