Yet every now and then the picture of the cabin rose before her imagination, and the smile died from her eyes, and her lips became straight-set and taut. She saw the old imbecile in the chimney corner and the shrewish step-mother, and the badgering step-sister, and even in the father who had brought her here, she knew that she had no effective ally. Clem Rawlins had his work cut out for him in protecting himself in these matters, and he sought the path of least resistance by taking refuge in surly silence until he was goaded to the point where his temper broke into violent outburst.
At last, the walk ended, ended at the door-step of the cheerless cabin, and there as Minerva crossed the stile stood her step-mother, on the threshold with her arms akimbo and a clay pipe clamped between her teeth.
"M'nervy," she said in a rasping tone, in which dwelt no note of welcome, "I've done put yore b'longin's under Sis's bed. Thar hain't no more pegs ter hang things on an' Newty's done fared back from down b'low. He's a-goin' ter lay down on ther bed you've been usin'."
"Who's Newty?" she asked. The boy's name had not been often mentioned since she had come over here, and she had forgotten the ragged lad she had known years before, when instead of being a murderer he was only a small shaver with sullen eyes and a tongue which he did not often use.
"Newty's my oldest boy," enlightened the elder woman briefly. "He's been a sojournin' in Frankfort." Then in a tone of absolute commonplace she added: "He's been in ther penitenshery."
Minerva Rawlins stood silent, but her cheeks blazed wrathfully. So, beside the horrors of uncongeniality under this roof, she was now to be turned out of her own bed to make way for an arrival from the state prison.
Long ago she had learned to set a seal upon her lips and to endure in silence what things must be borne, but into her eyes flashed an insurgent gleam, and the hag-like woman in the doorway caught it and scowled.
"I reckon Newty's got a license ter dwell in this-hyar house," she belligerently asserted. "He was born hyar, an' he didn't come in hyar taggin' along with no widderer. Newty hain't no step-child."
The speaker turned and disappeared into the general murk of the interior, and the girl followed her without comment, but with a suddenly born hatred for the man who had come from a cell back to the family which she must call her own.