What the place looked like on the inside was nothing more nor less than an old Spanish inn. Billie did not know this because she had never seen one, but the room reminded her vaguely of something very romantic and picturesque, and what was most curious about the place was that the outside seemed to have no connection whatever with the inside. They were not even related to each other by distant kinship. Outside were the dignified gray walls and gabled windows of an old seashore house. The inside appeared to be one very large room. The uneven floor was paved with red tile and in a big stone fireplace at one end burned an enormous fire of driftwood. From the blackened rafters hung garlands of red peppers, bunches of herbs and strings of onions and garlic. Shining copper vessels were ranged on shelves and around two sides of the room ran a gallery with steps leading up from one end.
“Am I in a dream,” cried Billie. “I feel as if I had been transported somewhere suddenly.”
“Isn’t it fascinating?” said Elinor. “The old house has been in Mrs. Ruggles’ family for two hundred years. It used to be a sort of sailors’ inn, and there are many stories connected with it. But here she comes herself. She’s just as wonderful as her house.”
Mrs. Ruggles was certainly a remarkable figure. She was very tall, one of the tallest women Billie had ever seen, with coal black hair, shiny dark eyes, rather too close together, a beaked eagle nose, and a very determined mouth, with a slightly humorous curve to the lips, which softened her somewhat stern face.
She wore a most outlandish dress for that part of the world, of striped red and black cotton, but she was scrupulously clean, and the coarse cotton kerchief tied around her neck was as white as snow. Her stockings also were white, and she wore men’s low shoes of enormous size, even for a woman of her height.
The boys and girls all shook hands with her as if she were an old friend. She called them by their first names and when she was introduced to Billie she gave her a long, keen look that seemed to read the young girl’s most hidden and secret thoughts. She walked with an erect carriage and majestic tread, and Billie had a feeling that she had been introduced to a personage.
“She’s a great old girl,” said Merry Brown, when Mrs. Ruggles had disappeared into the back regions of the house to finish cooking the dinner. “She can sail a boat as well as anybody along this coast. She fishes, digs for clams, catches lobsters in traps, and does all the things the fishermen around here do and more, too, because she is the jim dandiest cook in the county.”
“Hasn’t she any husband or family?” asked Billie.
“She was married twice. Ruggles, the second husband, was an Irishman. He was a fine fellow, a sea captain, but he died long ago. Her children are floating about the country somewhere.”
“What was her name before she married? Nothing like Ruggles, I am sure.”