"They're ugly and they're smelly." This was true. "Besides, they hide you and most folks wouldn't find you. They go with your scrouchy frown," here Donelle mimicked Jo's most forbidding manner, "and your tight mouth. Why, Mamsey, it took, even me, a long while to find you behind these things. I had to keep remembering how you looked while I was so sick in the long, dark nights; how you looked when you kept—It—away."
The vague look crept to Donelle's eyes, she rarely beat against the wall that hid her past. For that, Jo was hourly thankful.
"But of course now I can always find you, Mamsey. I just say to the thing you put up in front of you, 'Get out of the way' and then I see you, my kind, my dear, faithful, blessed Mamsey, shining!"
Poor Jo as a shining object was rather absurd; but the colour rose to her dark face, as it might have at the tones of a lover.
"You're a beautiful Mamsey when you don't hide. I suppose my father could find you, and that's why he wanted to bring me to you. Mamsey, did you love my father?"
Poor Jo, standing by the stove, her ugly garments steaming and hot, looked at the girl as a frightened culprit might; then she saw that the question was put from the most primitive viewpoint and so she said:
"Yes, I loved him."
"Of course. Well, now, Mamsey, will you let me burn those ugly old, smelly clothes?"
"No; but I'll put them in the attic, child."
"That's a good Mamsey. And the scowl and the tight mouth, will you put them in the attic, too?"