Then she looked again, and she wasn't so sure; in fact, she hadn't at any time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into things.
"This all you was to take in?" asked Mrs. Hale.
"No," said the sheriff's wife; "she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want," she ventured in her nervous little way, "for there's not much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural. If you're used to wearing an apron—. She said they were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes—here they are. And then her little shawl that always hung on the stair door."
She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.
Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman.
"Mrs. Peters!"
"Yes, Mrs. Hale?"
A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters' eyes.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, in a voice that seemed to shrink away from the subject.