With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter the cottage.
But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We were laughing. We’re not afraid if you don’t come very close.—I’ve got something to tell you. See! I’m not afraid.”
Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no longer liked Alison, and with Cecily she had never had much acquaintance. But they were women and young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. She went halfway up the path toward them. The grey and white cat came from the cottage and followed her.
Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish face and an expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened beyond what might have seemed possible to her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid spring that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual fount. She spoke in a thin and cutting voice. “Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose away.—What are you going to do now, Joan?”
“I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary to tell thee.” She looked past her to Cecily. “They say your sister died. I am sorry.”
But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. “Yes, she died. They do say that you would not be sorry if more of us died. Why people like you and—and Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us others—”
“What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish no harm to any—”
Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial evil in her save a teasing devil. “Oh, they say that you and a black man understand each other! Some boys told me—”
“Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. She came closer to the gate, and Joan, as though drawn against her will, approached from her side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—”