RUTHY'S COUNTRY.—Page 191.
RUTHY'S COUNTRY.
It was such a strange, sad, old face to be on such a young, slight form, that you could not help looking at it again and again. Otherwise there was nothing remarkable about her. She was just a girl sweeping a crossing, in a bustling, dirty street, on a muddy, sloppy March day.
She was thinly clothed, but not more so than others of her class; and there was nothing in particular to make me notice her except this queer, expressive, melancholy, unyouthful countenance. She wore a worsted hood which left the whole face visible. You could see the forehead, broad and low, and lined with puzzled thinking; the dusky, tumbled hair; the wishful, pathetic mouth with its drooping corners; and the great, strange, olive-colored eyes, which looked as if they had asked for something they could never find for such a weary while that now they would never ask again,—eyes dark with despair, and yet with a suggestion of something else in them which set you questioning.
Patiently she swept on. Sometimes she had to spring aside from the rapid passage of cart or carriage, sometimes she made clean the way of some dainty foot passenger, who rewarded her with a penny; but all the time the hopeless, unchildlike visage never betrayed the slightest gleam of interest. I was dabbling in art a little, just then; and I stood in the window of a picture store and watched her, thinking that her strange, impassive face ought to fit, somewhere, in the illustrations I was making for a book of ballads, but not knowing quite how to use it.
All at once, as I watched, I saw a singular change pass over her. She held her broom motionless, her lips parted, a light as if at midnight the sun should rise, lighted the darkness of her eyes, her whole expression kindled with something,—interest, surprise, expectation,—I hardly knew what, but something that transformed it as by a spell. I stepped to the door then, and followed her eyes up the street.