“I wouldn’t sleep there for worlds,” she said.
Gainah, her claw-like hand caught stiffly round the banisters to help her progress, went slowly down, stair by stair. Pamela, close behind her, looked contemptuous—of everything: the old-fashioned place, the odd old woman.
They crossed the room which the yew made so dark. Gainah opened the door into the narrow corridor. Pamela followed. There was a window looking out at the garden. On the ledge were blood-red geraniums, and on the distempered walls queer prints in black frames.
She didn’t approve of those crinkled, brownish prints; they were hardly decent.
Gainah flung open the door of the other room.
“Jethro,” she said in her high, grating voice, “here’s your Cousin Pamela—on the mother’s side.”
[CHAPTER II.]
THE girl winced and hung back, as one does at physic or a possible blow. She looked along the narrow passage, as if for the support of another woman. But Gainah had hobbled away, shutting the door behind her. Pamela stood alone. She looked round her—at the oak table strewn with papers—old copies of the Field and Farm and Home.
There were a pair of driving-gloves thrown down, and a whip with a broken thong. There was a great blue bowl half full of waste paper and ends of string. A pair of brass candlesticks winked on the ledge beside the vivid geraniums. She gave a second nervous look at the colored prints in black frames, prints of which she did not quite approve. A full voice from inside the room said impatiently, “Come in.”