and though they were not at all alike in feature or complexion, there
was an astonishing resemblance between them in size, in figure, in
voice, in expression, and, apparently, in disposition.

Sitting on a bench, watching them as a dog watches its master's coat,
was a girl of some undeterminable age,--perhaps of ten or twelve
years. She wore a shapeless stout gingham garment, her shoes were
many sizes too large for her, and the laces were dangling. Her
nerveless hands and long arms sprawled in her lap as if they had no
volition in them. She sat with her head slightly drooping, her knees
apart, and her feet aimlessly turned in. Her lower lip hung a
little, but only a little, loosely. She looked neither at earth nor
at sky, but straight at the two belligerents, with whose bloodthirsty
play she was obliged to interfere at intervals. She held in her lap
a doll made of a roll of brown paper, with a waist and a neck
indicated by gingham strings. Pieces of ravelled rope were pinned on
the head part, but there was no other attempt to assist the
imagination. She raised her dull eyes; they seemed to hold in their
depths a knowledge of aloofness from the happier world, and their
dumb sorrow pierced your very heart, while it gave you an
irresistible sense of aversion. She smiled, but the smile only gave
you a new thrill; it was vacant and had no joy in it, rather an
uncommunicable grief. As she sat there with her battered doll, she
was to the superficial eye repulsive, but to the eye that pierces
externals she was almost majestic in her mysterious loneliness and
separation.

The steam-whistle of a factory near by blew a long note for twelve
o'clock, and she rose from her bench, took the children by the hand,
and dragged them, kindly but firmly, up the steps into the kitchen.