Before a fairly comfortable coal fire in a grate as absurdly small as the one in the room above, sat an enormous woman eating her supper from a little table drawn up beside her arm chair. The supper was comfortable, and the fragrance of hot buttered toast mingling with the appetizing fumes of bacon and sausage suddenly reminded the two forlorn young girls that they were ravenously hungry.
Too amazed to utter a word, they stood gaping at the strange woman, who appeared to show no surprise whatever.
“You’re a nice pair of young women,” she said sharply, “getting here at this hour when I expected you at six o’clock. I suppose you are hungry, too. Marty, make some more toast and another pot of tea. Sit down. As long as you’re here, we might as well make the best of it. Draw up two chairs. I should never have recognized you, Eva. You used to look like your mother, but you have lost even those good looks. You are much too tall. The Smithsons and Rivers are all medium-sized——”
The girls looked at her pityingly. Medium-sized was hardly the word to use in connection with this gigantic female.
“But there is some mistake——” began Billie. “I am looking for my cousin——”
The woman groaned aloud.
“Don’t you know your own cousin whose bread and butter you expect to eat for the next six months and whose roof you expect to sleep under?”
“My cousin is Miss Helen Campbell,” exclaimed Billie desperately. “We only arrived from America the other day. Didn’t she engage lodgings from you and telegraph we were coming this evening?”
“What is this you’re telling me?” cried the woman. “You mean to say you’re not my two cousins, Eva and Laura Smithson? Who are you?” she demanded fiercely. “Where did you come from? Give me back the three shillings I paid for your cab fare, and a big price it was, too.”
Her small pale eyes gleamed angrily at them and her enormous bulk fairly trembled with rage.