A STRANGE WOMAN
Miss Sibby opened a door in the corner near the fireplace and led her visitors up a steep and narrow flight of stairs to a small upper chamber in the roof, which was lighted by one dormer window, and furnished very simply with a bedstead, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and two cane chairs.
“Now, you see, I’m very sorry to have to fetch you up here, where there’s no fire; but that strange woman, you know, when she come, of course I had to give up my room to her, and so you see how it is,” said Miss Sibby, apologetically.
“Oh! never mind. We shall not stay up here long enough to get chilled; but who is the woman, anyhow?” inquired Mrs. Hedge.
“Well, she is a widdy woman, and her name is a Mrs. Wright, and she come from Callyfoundland.”
“California, do you mean?”
“Yes; I s’pose that is it. I was thinking of Newfoundland, where Roland made his first voyage, and I got ’em mixed. It’s impossible to memorize all the places, sez I. Well, about Mrs. Wright. She was a passenger on board the Blue Bird; and, naterally, Roland being third mate, got acquainted long of her, and she was bound for Port Tobacco, where she had business in the neighborhood concerning her late husband’s affairs, and so she come down from Baltimore long o’ Roland, and he fotch her here, and what could I do, sez I? I couldn’t turn her out’n doors, could I? And she and Roland are that thick together as I sometimes s’picions mebbe as she’s his own mother; for, you know, nobody knows who Roland’s people are—a child which was flung ashore by the sea when the Carrier Pigeon was wrecked.”
“But if she was she would say so, wouldn’t she?” inquired Mrs. Hedge.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I will ask her if she ever had a long-lost child. But, sez I, it’s a delicate question, sez I, to ask of a strange woman, sez I. And so I think I’ll wait and see how things will turn out. Anyhow, you’ll see her at tea time, and Roland, too, and just you take notice!”
And so saying, Miss Sibby attended her guests—who had finished their toilets—downstairs.