This was a few hours before they were to come to Millings. They had changed trains at a big, bare, glaring city several hours before and were now in a small, gritty car with imitation-leather seats. They were running through a gorge, and below and ahead Sheila could see the brown plain with its patches of snow and, like a large group of red toy houses, the town of Millings, far away but astonishingly distinct in the clear air.
Sylvester, considering her question, turned his emerald slowly.
"The girls are all right, Miss Sheila. They're lookers. I guess I've spoiled 'em some. They'll be crazy over you—sort of a noo pet in the house, eh? I've wired to 'em. They must be hoppin' up and down like a popper full of corn."
"And Mrs. Hudson?"
Sylvester grinned—the wrinkle cutting long and deep across his lip.
"Well, ma'am, she ain't the hoppin' kind."
A few minutes later Sheila discovered that emphatically she was not the hopping kind. A great, bony woman with a wide, flat, handsome face, she came along the station platform, kissed Sylvester with hard lips and stared at Sheila … the stony stare of her kind.
"Babe ran the Ford down, Sylly," she said in the harshest voice Sheila had ever heard. "Where's the girl's trunk?"
Sylvester's sallow face reddened. He turned quickly to Sheila.
"Run over to the car yonder, Miss Sheila, and get used to Babe, while I kind of take the edge off Momma."
Sheila did not run. She walked in a peculiar light-footed manner which gave her the look of a proud deer.