Everybody spoke slightingly of Mrs.
Jim Sloane.

The men laughed meaningly when they saw her pass, wrapped in an old plaid shawl, which she wore summer and winter, and which seemed almost like a uniform.

Stories were told of her dirt and shiftlessness, of the hens which roosted in her kitchen.

Poor Mrs.
Jim Sloane, in her blue plaid shawl, tramping frequently from her solitary house through the village, was a byword and a mocking to all the people.
When William and Barney came abreast of her house they saw the blue flutter of Mrs.Jim Sloane's shawl out before, above the blue dazzle of the snow.
"Hullo!" she was crying out in her shrill voice, and waving her hand to them to stop.
William pulled the horse up short, and the woman came plunging through the snow close to his side.
"She's in here," she said, with a knowing smile.

The faded fair hair blew over her eyes; she pushed it back with a coquettish gesture; there was a battered prettiness about her thin pink-and-white face, turning blue in the sharp wind.
"When did she get here ?" asked Barney.
"This forenoon.