Yet there he stood, more easily, she felt, than she sat.

She sat looking straight out at the rain and thinking of it.
The open doorway and her vision were crossed a moment after by a figure which put these thoughts out of her head.

It was the figure of a little black girl, going by through the rain, with an old basket at her back which probably held food or firing that she had been picking up along the streets of the city.
She wore a wretched old garment which only half covered her, and that was already half wet; her feet and ancles were naked; and the rain came down on her thick curly head.

No doubt she was accustomed to it; the road-worn feet must have cared little for wet or dry, and the round shock of wool perhaps never had a covering; yet it was bowed to the rain, and the little blackey went by with lagging step and a sort of slow crying.

It touched Elizabeth with a disagreeable feeling of pain.