Presently there was a wild gallop and great clash of bells past the window, and a shout at the door. Margaret Bean put on her little blue shawl and opened it when the shout had been twice repeated. Old David Hautville sat there in his sleigh, keeping a tight rein on his tugging roan. “My daughter here?” he shouted. “Whoa, there!”
“There's sick folks here,” said Margaret Bean, shivering in the doorway. “You hadn't ought to holler so.” Her tearful eyes were more frankly hostile than usual. She had always looked down from her own slight eminence of life upon these Hautvilles, and now was full of scorn that her master was to marry one of them.
“I want to know if my daughter is here,” said David Hautville, and he did not lower his voice. It sounded like a hoarse bellow of wrath, coming out of the white whirl of snow. His fur coat was all crusted with snow, his great mustache heavy with it; the roan plunged in a rising cloud of it.
“No, she ain't here,” replied Margaret Bean, and her weak voice seemed by its very antithesis to express the utmost scorn and disgust at the brutality of the other.
“Has she been here?”
“Yes, she's been here.” Margaret made as though to shut the door, but David Hautville stopped her.
“Did she start for home?”
“You'd better ask somebody that knows more about it.”
“Where did she go?”
“You'd better ask somebody that knows about it!” repeated Margaret Bean, in her malicious meekness. Then she shut the door.