But presently what appeared to be a little bundle of rags far off at a back corner stirred, moved, and developed itself into a very ragged little girl with very tangled hair. She was perhaps seven or eight years of age—a child with wide, dark eyes and white, even teeth, as now they might see, for she smiled shyly as they paused at the opening of the cave. “Come here, Min,” said old Granny Williams. “Come on out here an’ talk to the lady, won’t ye?” The child came out, very slowly, shy as some wild creature. She was clad now in a single-piece nondescript garment, was barefooted, and her hair apparently had never known comb or covering. “Whar’s yore mammy at, Min?” demanded the old lady. The child made no answer; only stood twisting a toe into the gravel of the roadway, painfully embarrassed by the presence of this strange creature whose like she never had seen in all her life. “It’s only a furrin lady with fotched-on clothes,” said old Granny Williams. “She won’t hurt ye. Kain’t ye come an’ shake hands?” “Yes, little girl, come,” said Marcia Haddon suddenly, holding out her hand, and leaning forward with so bright a smile that slowly the child came to her, shyly extending her hand. Marcia Haddon took the child’s hand in her own. As she did so a strange emotion suddenly came upon her—a primal glow at this touch of a child’s warm hand in her own. Sudden tears came into her own eyes—tears not unhappy, either; for now, in some way unexplainable to herself, a whole, new, wide world seemed to open all around her. In her own world of ease, apart, she never yet had known or dreamed the great, throbbing, vital things of life itself. But these simple folk, poor, forgotten—they knew them all. They were so far richer than herself. Their world had been so much wider than her own. The child stood looking shyly at her, like any wild creature, her dark eyes wide and wistful, across them passing alternate waves of light and shadow, as left by a passing cloud upon the sky. But, moved though she was to speak to the strange lady, she did not do so. Only she stood looking up wistfully, and the woman who sat above her looked down wistfully in turn. “Have ye had yore breakfast, Min?” asked Granny Williams brusquely. The child shook her head, her finger in her mouth now, her toe still twisting at the earth. “Well, well, hain’t that a shame! I reckon yore mammy’s at the corn-hoein’ up to the big house in the bottoms, hain’t she?” The child nodded her head. “Well, well, ye shall have somethin’ to eat.” The old lady opened the top of the small basket which hung on her arm, a basket which it was always her custom to take to church with her for the sake of certain children and grandchildren of her own. She drew out a round cookie with a hole in the center, which she extended to the child of the wandering women—the first sweetmeat the little one had ever known in all her life.