Tell him he must write what he wants to tell me." Margaret Bean's eyes were sharp as steel points.

She had not known what was in the letter.

"Hey ?" said she, pretending that she had not heard, in order to make Madelon repeat and perhaps reveal more.
"I can't come," said Madelon.

"He can write what he wants to tell me." Suddenly a great red flush spread over her pale face and her neck.
She lowered her eyes before the other woman as if in utter degradation of shame, and shrank back into the house and closed the door in Margaret Bean's face.
Margaret Bean stood for a moment, a silent, shapeless figure in the cold air.

"Pretty actions, I call it," said she then, quite loudly, and went out of the yard with a curious tilting motion on slender ankles, as of a balancing bale of wool.
Madelon slipped her letter into her pocket as she entered the kitchen.