But Rebecca kept herself well hid. After William had hired the old
Bennet house and established her there, she lived with curtains down
and doors bolted. Never a neighbor saw her face at door or window,
although all the women who lived near did their housework with eyes
that way. She would not go to the door if anybody knocked. The caller
would hear her scurrying away. Nobody could gain admittance if
William were not at home.
Barney went to the door once, and her voice sounded unexpectedly loud
and piteously shrill in response to his knock.
"You can't come in! go away!" cried Rebecca.
"I don't want to say anything hard to you," said Barney.
"Go away, go away!" repeated Rebecca, and then he heard her sob.
"Don't cry," pleaded Barney, futilely, through the door. But he heard
his sister's retreating steps and her sobs dying away in the
distance.
He went away, and did not try to see her again.
Rose went to see Rebecca, stealing out of a back door and scudding
across snowy fields lest her mother should espy her and stop her. But
Rebecca had not come to the door, although Rose had stood there a
long time in a bitter wind.
"She wouldn't let me in," she whispered to her brother in the store,
when she returned. She was friendly to him in a shamefaced, evasive
sort of way, and she alone of his family. His father and mother
scarcely noticed him.
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