If Billie had not been so tired and bewildered, she would have felt some surprise at this rejoinder. However, the maid paid the cabbie, who cracked his whip and drove off in the darkness. Then the two young girls hastened up the curved flight of steps and plunged into a hall of utter blackness, followed by the maid, who closed the door with a rattling bang and led them into the parlor.
“Where is my cousin?” demanded Billie.
“She says you’re to wyte. She’ll be up in a jiffy.”
With that the maid departed, and the two girls sat down much dejected in front of a tiny little grate filled with dead ashes of past fires. A dim light from one gas jet turned low cast great fantastic shadows on the wall, and a deadly quiet pervaded the old house.
CHAPTER VI.—MISS FELICIA RIVERS.
They waited in gloomy silence for what seemed an age. Never in all their lives had they experienced such forlorn sensations as they felt in that shabby parlor. They listened with strained ears for sounds through the house. Down in some subterranean, cavernous place they could hear a voice, loud, shrill and scolding, and presently the maid returned bearing a gas-lighter, with which she turned the taper on to its full powers.
What a room that was, as revealed now by the light! It reminded the girls of a hospital for broken-down furniture:—rickety chairs and tables; pictures that hung crooked on the walls; a musty, dusty carpet. They took it all in with one frightened, comprehensive glance, and they knew that if Miss Campbell were there, it would only be for one night,—perhaps only for one hour.
“My cousin, where is she?” demanded Billie abruptly, feeling that something must be done at once. “Will you take me to her room, please?”
The maid, who, by the light of the gas, proved to be a wretched little object, down at the heel, shabby, with her cap awry and a smut across one cheek, turned on her fiercely.
“Your cousin, the Missus as is, is a-comin’ when she gits ready to come h’and no sooner,” she said, giving a fair imitation of Billie’s manner and voice. “She awn’t ready yet h’and I’d like to see her as would myke her come afore she is.”