e desolate forlornness of a habitation in which no human
being has dwelt for a very long time; there was dust on the
mantelpiece, a melancholy sputtering of coal choked with cinders and
gasping for breath in the fireplace, stuffy hot clamminess beating
about the unopened windows. Along the breadth of the faded brown carpet
some fifty cane-bottomed chairs were pressed tightly in rows together,
and in front of the window, facing the chairs, was a little wooden
table with a chair beside it, on the table a glass of water and a Bible.

When Maggie and her aunts entered the chairs were almost all occupied
and they were forced to sit at the end of the last row but one. The
meeting had apparently not yet begun, and many heads were turned
towards them as they took their places. Maggie fancied that the glances
directed at herself were angry and severe, but that was very possibly
her imagination. She soon recognised people known to her--Miss
Pyncheon, calm and placid; Mrs. Smith, Caroline's mother, very stout,
hot, and self-important; Amy Warlock, proud and severe; and Miss Avies
herself standing, like a general surveying his forces, behind the table.

The room was draughty and close and had a confused smell of oil-cloth
and geraniums, and Maggie knew that soon she would have a headache. She
fancied that already the atmosphere was influencing the meeting. From
where she sat she could see a succession of side faces, and it was
strange what a hungry, appealing look these pale cheeks and staring
eyes had. Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were. She thought,
fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr. Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and
she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in
mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and the last ship's biscuit gone.

They were not, taken altogether, a very fine collection, old maids and
young girls, many of them apparently of the servant class, one or two
sitting with open mouths and a vacancy of expression that seemed to
demand a conjurer with a rabbit and a hat. Some faces were of the true
fanatic cast, lit with the glow of an expectancy and a hope that no
rational experience had ever actually justified. One girl, whom Maggie
had seen with Aunt Anne on some occasion, had especially this prophetic
anticipation in the whole pose of her body as she bent forward a
little, her elbows on her knees her chin on her hands, gazing with wide
burning eyes at Miss Avies. This girl, whom Maggie was never