Margaret Bean's eyes were sharp as steel points. She had not known what was in the letter. “Hey?” said she, pretending that she had not heard, in order to make Madelon repeat and perhaps reveal more.
“I can't come,” said Madelon. “He can write what he wants to tell me.”
Suddenly a great red flush spread over her pale face and her neck. She lowered her eyes before the other woman as if in utter degradation of shame, and shrank back into the house and closed the door in Margaret Bean's face.
Margaret Bean stood for a moment, a silent, shapeless figure in the cold air. “Pretty actions, I call it,” said she then, quite loudly, and went out of the yard with a curious tilting motion on slender ankles, as of a balancing bale of wool.
Madelon slipped her letter into her pocket as she entered the kitchen. Her father and all her brothers were there. It was shortly after breakfast, and they had not yet gone out.
“Who was it at the door?” her father asked. He sat by the fire in his great boots.
“Margaret Bean.”
“What did she want?”
“Lot Gordon sent for me to come over there.”
“What for?”