The woman mumbled something inarticulate and backed a little. The man in the room leaned forward and rolled bloodshot eyes at her. Maria began at once. She had much of her mother's spirit, which, when it was aroused, balked at nothing. She pointed at Jessy, then she extended her small index-finger severely at Mrs. Ramsey.
“Mrs. Ramsey,” said she, and she stood so straight that she looked much taller, her blue eyes flashed like steel at the slinking ones of the older woman, “I want to inquire why you sent this child to school such a day as this in such a condition?”
Mrs. Ramsey again murmured something inarticulate and backed still farther. Maria followed her quite into the room. A look of insolent admiration became evident in the bloodshot eyes of the man beside the stove. Maria had no false modesty when she was righteously incensed. She would have said just the same before a room full of men.
“That child,” she said, and she again pointed at Jessy, shivering in her little, scanty frock—“that child came to school to-day without any clothing under her dress; one of the coldest days of the year, too. I don't see what you are thinking of, you, her own mother, to let a child go out in such a condition! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
Then the woman crimsoned with wrath and she found speech, the patois of New England, instead of New Jersey, to which Maria was accustomed, and which she understood. This woman, instead of half speaking, ran all her words together in a coarse, nasal monotone.
“Hadn't nothin' to put on her,” she said. “She'd outgrowed all she had, hadn't nothin', mind your own business, go 'long home, where you b'long.”
Maria understood the last words, and she replied, fiercely, “I am not going home one step until you promise me you'll get decent underwear for this child to wear to school,” said she, “and that you won't allow her to go out-of-doors in this condition again. If you do, I'll have you arrested.”
The woman's face grew redder. She made a threatening movement towards Maria, but the man beside the stove unexpectedly arose and slouched between them, grinning and feeling in his pocket, whence he withdrew two one-dollar notes.
“Here,” he said, in a growling voice, which was nevertheless intended to be ingratiating. “Go 'n' buy the young one somethin' to go to school in. Don't yer mind.”
Maria half extended her hand, then she drew it back. She looked at the man, who exhaled whiskey as a fungus an evil perfume. She glanced at Mrs. Ramsey.