She turned away and stood looking at the floor with
a darkening face, one hand at her temple.
* * * * *
Her mother, darning stockings by the window, suddenly laid down her
work and said: "Sylvia, how would you like to walk with me over to the
Martins' to see if they have any eggs? Our hens have absolutely gone
back on us."
Sylvia did not welcome this idea at all, feeling as overwhelming an
aversion to companionship as to solitude, but she could think of no
excuse, and in an ungracious silence put on her wraps and joined her
mother, ready on the porch, the basket in her mittened hand.
Mrs. Marshall's pace was always swift, and on that crisp, cold, sunny
day, with the wind sweeping free over the great open spaces of the
plain about them, she walked even more rapidly than usual. Not a word
was spoken. Sylvia, quite as tall as her mother now, and as vigorous,
stepped beside her, not noticing their pace, nor the tingling of the
swift blood in her feet and hands. Her fresh young face was set in
desolate bitterness.
The Martins' house was about six miles from the Marshalls'. It was
reached, the eggs procured, and the return begun. Still not a word had
been exchanged between the two women. Mrs. Marshall would have been
easily capable, under the most ordinary circumstances, of this long
self-contained silence, but it had worked upon Sylvia like a sojourn
in the dim recesses of a church.
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