"Weren't you yellin'?" persisted Rose. "Did you lose your voice doin' it? What in the hell's the matter with you, I say?"
With a sweep of her stout arm, she seized the girl's bare shoulder and shook it till Mary's teeth clicked like castanets.
"I'm not goin' to have any such racket in my house!" the woman asseverated, as she plied her punishment. "You've got to learn first-off to keep your mouth to yourself, and be dead sure if you don't I'll give you a real beatin'."
She tossed Mary from her, as if her victim had been a bundle of straw, and stood up again, arms akimbo, breathing scarcely beyond her normal speed.
Mary was half mad and wholly sick with dread. She wanted to cry out for rescue and dared not. She wanted to rise and try to force the door or break open the shutters, but she could not move. She could only lie there panting for breath, with her mouth gasping and her heart hammering at her breast. She had closed her eyes. She opened them just in time to see Rose, whose slippered foot had touched something on the floor, stoop, pick up, and place beside the key in her bosom, a crumpled purple-bordered handkerchief.
"Now then," said the woman in a tone that, if still hard, was at least less intense than its predecessor, "try to tell me what's the trouble, like somebody this side of Matteawan."
With a supreme lunge at courage, Mary got her voice.
"I want my clothes," she said dully. "And where's Max?"
"Your clothes ain't fit to wear," said Rose; "an' I don't know where Max is. What you need is breakfast."
"I want my clothes," monotonously repeated Mary. "I couldn't eat to save my life. Hasn't Max come back?"