But Miss Campbell did not reply.
By dint of inquiring at every street corner and much impatient studying of maps, they finally found the house wherein lived this spinster relic of the Campbell family. Nearly twenty minutes late for lunch, they sounded the knocker with the desperate determination to see the thing through if death or imprisonment resulted.
If you have ever been a tourist in Europe, you will recall having felt the same way when you have been seeing sights all day and forgotten the lunch hour.
The house had the aspect of a prison indeed from outside, with its thick gray walls, iron gratings on the windows of the lower story, and massive front doors. And the old woman who admitted them might have been a matron of the prison, so stern and uncompromising was her expression.
She ushered them silently through a broad, dark hall with stiff, high-backed chairs ranged against the wall, to the drawing-room.
Now, Miss Campbell had an angelic disposition, but even angels, when put to the test by fatigue and hunger and also a strange and unacknowledged flutter in the region of the heart, may be a trifle irritable. If Annie Campbell was going to be as stiff as a starched shirt and formal and all that, she was just going to be a little stiffer. There was a blister on her heel that minute that was agonizing to a degree, and if Annie Campbell had been any other person but a prim, Scotch spinster, she would have asked for the loan of a pair of slippers.
All these aggressive and agitated thoughts were flying through the little lady’s head like small, angry clouds before the coming storm, as she led the way into one of the most charming parlors ever seen. A splendidly handsome old lady in black silk came forward with both hands outstretched. Her tall erect figure was well filled out; her features regular; her hair still showed signs of having once been red, and her brown eyes were wells of intelligent humor.
“My dear cousin,” she exclaimed. “It will have been many years since we met in this room.”
Billie was surprised. She had assuredly been prepared for something quite different, and she wondered why Miss Helen Campbell had spoken of her cousin with so much irritation. Miss Annie Campbell was certainly the very opposite of her Cousin Helen in looks and figure, but, it must be confessed, equally as handsome. What beautiful young girls they must have been forty years ago!
“My dear Annie, don’t speak of the years,” exclaimed Miss Helen with much agitation. “Age is the only thing that has come to us. We are still spinsters.”