th hasty, agitated hands, and trying to pull Susie out as well.

The doorway was garlanded with evergreen wreaths, over which a green and
white flag flapped; and curtseying and smiling beneath the wreaths stood
Dellwig's wife, a short lady with smooth hair, weather-beaten face, and
brown silk gloves, who would have been the stoutest person Anna had ever
seen if she had not just come from the presence of the parson's wife.

"I never saw so many bows in my life," grumbled Susie, pushing the
servant aside, and getting out cautiously, feeling very stiff and cold
and miserable. "Letty, you are on my dress--oh, how d'you do--how d'you
do," she murmured frostily, as the Frau Inspector seized her hand and
began to talk German to her. "Anna, are you coming? This--er--person
thinks I'm you, and is making me a speech."

Dellwig, who had sent his horse away in charge of a small boy, rapidly
explained to his wife that the young lady now getting out of the
carriage was their late master's niece, and that the other one must be
the sister-in-law mentioned in the lawyer's letter; upon which Frau
Dellwig let Susie go, and transferred her smiles and welcome to Anna.
Susie went into the house to get out of the cold, only to find herself
in a square hall whose iciness was the intolerable iciness of a place in
which no sun had been allowed to shine and no windows had been opened
for summers without number. When Uncle Joachim came down he lived in two
rooms at the back of the house, with a door leading into the garden
through which he went to the farm, and the hall had never been used, and
the closed shutters never opened. There was no fireplace, or stove, or
heating arrangement of any sort. Glass doors divided it from an inner
and still more spacious hall, with a wide wooden staircase, and doors
all round it. The walls in both halls were painted grass green; and from
little chains in the ceiling stuffed hawks and eagles, shot by Uncle
Joachim, and grown with years very dusty and moth-eaten, hung swinging
in the draught. The floor was boarded, and was still damp from a recent
scrubbing. There was no carpet. A wooden bracket on the wall, with brass
hooks, held a large assortment of whips and hunting crops; and in one
corner stood an arrangement for coats, with Uncle Joachim's various
waterproofs and head-coverings hanging monumentally on its pegs.

"Oh, how dreadful!" thought Susie, shivering more violently than ever.
"And what a musty smell