“We Campbells do not change, do we, Helen? Neither ourselves nor our homes,” and Billie felt more and more convinced that some girlhood difference had separated the two cousins years before.
But the Scotch Miss Campbell was very hospitable and friendly, nevertheless. She led them upstairs, and in one of the vast bedrooms they washed the grime of Edinburgh smoke from their faces, and smoothed their front hair.
“Why don’t you ask her for a pair of slippers to ease your feet, Cousin Helen?” Billie suggested.
“I’d rather die,” replied that lady decisively.
At last, at an inexcusably late hour, they went down to luncheon and were served by the same uncompromising female who had opened the door.
Hot tea and certain rather queer, unaccustomed kinds of food warmed and cheered the five weary tourists, and presently they were all talking amiably together. It was evident that Miss Annie Campbell enjoyed the conversation of her young visitors. She asked them a hundred questions about America, and she amused them by relating some of the ghostly old legends that are clustered about Edinburgh as thickly as barnacles on the hull of a ship.
It was Mary Price, however, who, by some unconscious suggestion that she could not explain, presently told a story that she had read that morning in an old book, which came near to bringing the strained situation to a climax.
“Did you ever hear the tale of the two sisters who lived in the old town?” she began. “They quarreled when they were young and never spoke again. They lived for forty years in the same room up in one of those topply houses. A chalk line was drawn across the middle of the floor and there they slept and cooked and lived, each on her own side and never a word was spoken in all that time.”
“And didn’t they ever make up?” demanded Nancy.
“No, they died unreconciled, the book said.”