As the visitors advanced, children’s voices greeted them; the little ones were running in and out; they presently met and seized Mrs. Walker, dancing round her, and leading her in triumph into the hall.  Then Justina observed a good-sized doll, comfortably put to bed on one of the hall chairs, and tightly tucked up in some manifest pinafores; near it stood a child’s wheel-barrow, half full of picture-books.  “I shall not allow that sort of litter here when I come, as I hope and trust I soon shall do,” thought Justina.  “Children’s toys are all very well in their proper places.”

Then Justina, who had never been inside the house before, easily induced the children to take her from room to room, of those four which were thoroughfares to one another.  Her attentive eyes left nothing unnoticed, the fine modern water-colour landscapes on the walls of one, the delicate inlaid cabinets in another.  Then a library, with a capital billiard-table, and lastly John’s den.  There was something about all these rooms which seemed to show the absence of a woman.  They were not untidy, but in the drawing-room was John’s great microscope, with the green-shaded apparatus for lighting it; the books also from the library had been allowed to overflow into it, and encroach upon all the tables.  The dining-room alone was as other people’s dining-rooms, but John’s own den was so very far gone in originality and strangeness of litter, that Justina felt decidedly uneasy when she saw it; it made manifest to her that her hoped-for spouse was not the manner of man whom she could expect to understand; books also here had accumulated, and stood in rows on chairs and tables and shelves; pipes were lying on the stone chimneypiece, sharing it with certain old and new, beautiful and ugly bronzes; long papers of genealogies and calculations in John’s handwriting were pinned against the walls; various broken bits of Etruscan pottery stood on brackets here and there.  It seemed to be the owner’s habit to pin his lucubrations about the place, for here was a vocabulary of strange old Italian words, with their derivations, there a list of peculiarities and supposed discoveries in an old Norse dialect.

Emily in the meantime had noticed the absence of the twins; it was not till lunch was announced, and she went back into the dining-room that she saw them, and instantly was aware that something was amiss.

Justina advanced to them first, and the two girls, with a shyness very unusual with them, gave her their hands, and managed, but not without difficulty, to escape a kinder salutation.

And then they both came and kissed Emily, and began to do the honours of their father’s table.  There was something very touching to her in that instinct of good breeding which kept them attentive to Miss Fairbairn, while a sort of wistful sullenness made the rosy lips pout, and their soft grey eyes twinkle now and then with half-formed tears.

Justina exerted herself to please, and Emily sat nearly silent.  She saw very plainly that from some cause or other the girls were looking with dread and dislike on Justina as a possible step-mother.  The little ones were very joyous, very hospitable and friendly, but nothing could warm the cold shyness of Gladys and Barbara.  They could scarcely eat anything; they had nothing to say.