" said the first speaker hesitatingly.

"I'll fetch 'em up and you can change in the kitchen. The old woman
won't mind," said Harkutt reassuringly. "Come along." He led the way to
the kitchen; the two strangers exchanged a glance of humorous perplexity
and followed.

The quiet of the little room was once more unbroken. A far-off
commiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving her
guests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred the
white dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there was
a still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laugh
appeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. There
was another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly and
ostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter young
woman, her elder sister, at her side. Perceiving that the room was
empty, they both said "Oh!" yet with a certain artificiality of manner
that was evidently a lingering trace of some previous formal attitude
they had assumed. Then without further speech they each selected a
chair and a position, having first shaken out their dresses, and gazed
silently at each other.

It may be said briefly that sitting thus--in spite of their unnatural
attitude, or perhaps rather because of its suggestion of a photographic
pose--they made a striking picture, and strongly accented their separate
peculiarities. They were both pretty, but the taller girl, apparently
the elder, had an ideal refinement and regularity of feature which was
not only unlike Phemie, but gratuitously unlike the rest of her family,
and as hopelessly and even wantonly inconsistent with her surroundings
as was the elaborately ornamented accordion on the centre-table. She was
one of those occasional creatures, episodical in the South and West,
who might have been stamped with some vague ante-natal impression of a
mother given to over-sentimental contemplation of books of beauty and
albums rather than the family features; offspring of typical men and
women, and yet themselves incongruous to any known local or even general
type. The long swan-like neck, tendriled hair, swimming eyes, and small
patrician head, had never lived or moved before in Tasajara or the
West, nor perhaps even existed except as a personified "Constancy,"
"Meditation," or the "Baron's Bride," in mezzotint or copperplate. Even
the girl's common pink print dress with its high sleeves and shoulders
could not