"No, I thank you!" put in Miss Grandiere.
"Or me," continued Miss Sibby, without noticing the interruption, "or some other, as everybody knows all about, what did he go and do? Why, he went 'way out yonder to the Devil's Icy Peak, summers, and married of a stranger and a furriner, and a heathen and a pagan, for aught he knew! and fetches of her home here to us! That's what her daddy did! And now, what did her mammy do? Why, 'stead o' marrying of one of her own countrymen and kinsfolks, she ups and marries a 'Merican man as was a stranger and furriner to her; and a heathen and a pagan for aught that she knew."
"But they loved one another; there is no question of that," pleaded Miss Grandiere.
"What if they did? That's the contrariness of it, sez I! What call had either of 'em be 'a loving of strangers and furriners and a marrying of them, sez I? And now the gal has done just as her father and mother did before her! Turned her back on her own kith and kin, and took up 'long of a stranger and a furriner, and a heathen and a pagan, for aught she knows, sez I! It's in the blood, sez I! 'Trot sire, trot dam,' sez I! 'and the colt'll never pace,' sez I! And now, ladies, if you have thawed out and will take off your bonnets and things, I will put them away. But maybe you would rather go to a bedroom?"
"Yes," said Miss Grandiere, rising and going to a door on the side leading into an inner chamber.
"Oh! stop. Don't go in there, please, Miss Sukey, I--I have got a strange lady in there," hastily exclaimed their hostess.
"A strange lady!" repeated Miss Grandiere, in surprise.
"Yes--leastways a strange woman. I don't know about a lady; for if you're not acquainted with a person, sez I, you can't tell if they are ladies or no. But come upstairs and I will tell you about her, or leastways all I know about her. Lor', I sometimes s'picions as maybe she's Roland's mother!"
Miss Sibby opened a door in the corner near the fireplace and led her visitors up a steep and narrow flight of stairs to a small upper chamber in the roof, which was lighted by one dormer window, and furnished very simply with a bedstead, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and two cane chairs.
"Now, you see, I'm very sorry to have to fetch you up here, where there's no fire; but that strange woman, you know, when she come, of course I had to give up my room to her, and so you see how it is," said Miss Sibby, apologetically.