They put down their bags in the little bare-looking hallway from which a narrow flight of stairs ascended, and followed her into a big parlor on the right. Here they took chairs. The afternoon sun shone in through six wide windows and fell on the clean, carpetless floor. A wide fireplace was filled with the boughs of mountain cedar, and the hearth had been freshly whitewashed. There was a table in the center of the room, a tiny cottage organ between two windows, and some crude and gaudy print pictures in mahogany frames on the walls. The four individuals formed an awkward, purposeless group, and no one seemed able to think of anything to say. John was wondering what could possibly happen next, when Mrs. Whaley said:
"I know you both must be thirsty. I'll get Tilly to fetch in some fresh water from the well."
She rose stiffly and left the room. "Oh, Tilly! Tilly! where are you?" they heard her calling in the back part of the house. "Leave the churning a minute and draw up a bucket of fresh water. They are here."
Through the open windows from the shaded back yard John heard a girlish voice answering, "I'm coming, mother." Then there was a whir of a loose wooden windlass and the dull thump of a bucket as it struck the surface of the water. This was followed by the slow creaking of the windlass and a sound of pouring water.
"We didn't come here to be waited on like a couple of nabobs," Cavanaugh jested. "Let's go out to the well. We ought to begin right and be done with it. The last time I boarded in the country I chopped my own fire-wood and toted it in. I'd have washed the dishes I messed up, but the women of the house wouldn't let me."
Without protest Whaley got up and led the way through the sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen to the well in the yard where Mrs. Whaley and her daughter, a girl of about eighteen years of age, stood filling some glasses on a tray.
"My daughter Tilly," Whaley said, indifferently. "The only one I have left. Her two sisters married and moved off West. Her brother Tom died awhile back."
The girl seemed shy, and scarcely lifted her eyes as she advanced and held out her hand first to Cavanaugh and then to John. She was slight of build, not above medium height, and had blue eyes and abundant chestnut hair.
"Pass the water 'round," her mother instructed her, but both John and Cavanaugh stepped forward and helped themselves. For a moment Tilly stood hesitating, and then she turned to her churn at the kitchen door and began to raise and lower the dasher. She had rolled up her sleeves, and John, who was covertly watching her, saw her round white wrists and shapely fingers. The way her unbound hair fell about her neck and lay quivering on her moving shoulders caught and held his fancy. How gloriously different she seemed from the only girls he had ever met, the bedizened creatures whom he sometimes saw at his home with his mother and Jane Holder! And, strange to say, he almost pitied Tilly for being bound as she was to the two unemotional old people who seemed to rule her as with a rod of iron. What a patient little sentient machine she seemed!
"You'll want to see your rooms, I reckon," Whaley said. "Amelia'll show you up-stairs. The Ordinary said he didn't think you'd be over-particular. They have plenty of air and light."