“Ruskin, Amelia,” interrupted Mavis.  “Try and get it right, if only for once.”

Amelia took no notice of the interruption, but went on, as she dusted the cups, before putting them on the tray: 

“Dear Mr Fuskin!  ’Ow I would have looked after ’im, and ’ow carefully I’d ’ave counted ’is washing!”

Punctually, as the clock struck eight, the two Miss Mees entered the breakfast room; they kissed Mavis on the cheek before sitting down to the meal.  They asked each other and Mavis how they had slept, as was their invariable custom; but the sensitive, observant girl could not help noticing that the greetings of her employers were a trifle less cordial than was their wont.  Mavis put down this comparative coldness to their pride at the success of yesterday’s festival.

To the indifferent observer, the Miss Mees were exactly alike, being meagre, dilapidated, white-haired old ladies, with the same beaked noses and receding chins; both wore rusty black frocks, each of which was decorated with a white cameo brooch; both walked with the same propitiatory shuffle.  They were like a couple of elderly, moulting, decorous hens who, in spite of their physical disabilities, had something of a presence.  This was obtained from the authority they had wielded over the many pupils who had passed through their hands.

Nearer inspection showed that Miss Annie Mee was a trifle stouter than her sister, if this be not too robust a word to apply to such a wisp of a woman; that her eyes were kinder and less watery than Helen’s; also, that her face was less insistently marked with lines of care.

The Miss Mees’ dispositions were much more dissimilar than their appearance.  Miss Helen, the elder, loved her home and, in her heart of hearts, preferred the kitchen to any other part of the house.  It was she who attended to the ordering of the few wants of the humble household; she arranged the meals, paid the bills, and generally looked after the domestic economy of the college; she took much pride in the orderliness of her housekeeper’s cupboard, into which Amelia never dared to pry.  In the schoolroom, she received the parents, arranged the fees and extras, and inflicted the trifling punishment she awarded to delinquents, which latter, it must be admitted, gave her a faint pleasure.

Annie Mee, her sister, had a natural inclination for the flesh-pots of life.  She liked to lie abed on Sunday and holiday mornings; she spread more butter on her breakfast toast than Helen thought justified by the slenderness of their resources; she was indulgent to the pupils, and seized any opportunity that offered of going out for the evening.  She frequented (and had been known to enjoy) entertainments given in schoolrooms for church purposes she welcomed the theatre or concert tickets which were sometimes sent her by the father of one of the pupils (who was behind with his account), when, however paltry the promised fare, she would be waiting at the door, clad in her faded garments, a full hour before the public were admitted, in order not to miss any of the fun.  Mavis usually accompanied her on these excursions; although she was soon bored by the tenth-rate singers and the poor plays she heard and saw, she was compensated by witnessing the pleasure Miss Annie Mee got from these sorry dissipations.