Intensely black, intensely thick, and even tangled in their profusion, they bristled rather than fringed her eyelids, obliterating everything but the shining black pupils beneath, which were like certain lustrous hairy mountain berries.
It was this woodland suggestion that seemed to uncannily connect her with the locality.

I went on playfully:-- "That's not VERY old--but tell me--does your father, or DID your father, ever speak of you as his 'old woman ?'" She nodded.

"Then you thought I was mar ?" she said, smiling.
It was such a relief to see her worn face relax its expression of pathetic gravity--although this operation quite buried her eyes in their black thickest hedge again--that I continued cheerfully: "It wasn't much of a mistake, considering all you do for the house and family." "Then you didn't tell Billy 'to go and be dead in the ground with mar,' as he 'lows you did ?" she said half suspiciously, yet trembling on the edge of a smile.
No, I had not, but I admitted that my asking him to go to his mother might have been open to this dismal construction by a sensitive infant mind.

She seemed mollified, and again turned to go.
"Good-night, Miss--you know your father didn't tell me your real name," I said.
"Karline!" "Good-night, Miss Karline." I held out my hand.
She looked at it and then at me through her intricate eyelashes.

Then she struck it aside briskly, but not unkindly, said "Quit foolin', now," as she might have said to one of the children, and disappeared through the inner door.