It came, when, in throwing her weeds aside, a glance of the cripple saw, instead of stones and grass, two very neat and black and well-shaped little shoes planted there almost within reach of her hand. She drew herself back from the balsam, and looked sideways up, to see what the shoes belonged to. Daisy saw her face then; it was a bad face; so disagreeable that she looked away from it instantly to the balsams.
"What are you doing to your flowers?" she asked, gently.
The gentle little child-voice seemed to astonish the woman, although after an instant she made surly answer, "Whose business is it?"
"Wouldn't it be easier," said Daisy, not looking at her, "if you had something to help you get the weeds up? Don't you want a fork, or a hoe, or something?"
"I've got forks," said the cripple, sullenly. "I use 'em to eat with."
"No, but I mean, something to help you with the weeds," said
Daisy "that sort of fork, or a trowel."
The woman spread her brown fingers of both hands, like birds' claws, covered with the dirt in which she had been digging. "I've got forks enough," she said, savagely "there's what goes into my weeds. Now go 'long! "
The last words were uttered with a sudden jerk, and as she spoke them she plunged her hands into the dirt, and bringing up a double handful, cast it with a spiteful fling upon the neat little black shoes. Woe to white stockings, if they had been visible; but Daisy's shoes came up high and tight around her ankle, and the earth thrown upon them fell off easily again; except only that it lodged in the eyelet holes of the boot-lacing and sifted through a little there, and some had gone as high as the top of the boot and fell in. Quite enough to make Daisy uncomfortable, besides that the action half frightened her. She quitted the ground, went back to her pony chaise without even attempting to do anything with the contents of her basket. Daisy could go no further with her feet in this condition She turned the pony's head, and drove back to Melbourne.