But there was a softness in her face, a touching hesitancy, as though she had spent many years trying to be cheerful and no longer was, but the remnants of an earlier, eager kindness still remained. Her features had not hardened, in other words, and there were many women in that region whose features had hardened, women who had faces that could, by middle age, be the face of a man, but this was not the case for Connie Hatch.
