Ruth gave a glance about the big room, which they still made their sitting room in general, and approached the hall. Dot whispered:
“Oh-ee! I hope there are some little girls coming to call.”
There was nobody but this huge lady, though half a dozen little girls might have hidden behind her voluminous skirts. Ruth smiled upon the giantess and said, quickly, “Good-morning!”
“Vell!” was the deep-throated reply—almost a grunt. “Vell! iss de family home?”
“Certainly,” said Ruth, in her politest way. “Do come in. We are all at home,” and she ushered the visitor into the dining-room.
The lady stared hard at all the girls, and then around at the old-fashioned furniture; at the plate rail of Delft china which Ruth had taken out of a cupboard, where it had been hidden away for years; at the ancient cellarette; and at the few pieces of heavy plate with which the highboy and the lowboy were both decorated.
“Vell!” exclaimed the visitor, in that exceedingly heavy voice of hers, and for the third time. “I hear dere iss only madchens—girls—in dis house. Iss dot so—heh?”
“We are the four Kenway girls,” said Ruth, pleasantly. “We have no mother or father. But Aunt Sarah——”
“But you own dis house undt all de odder houses vot belonged to dot cr-r-ra-zy old mans—heh?”
Ruth flushed a little. She had begun to feel that such references to Uncle Peter were both unkind and insulting. “Uncle Peter left his property by will to us,” she said.