"Where in the wide world am I? Oh, what an unfortunate
little wretch I am! A stolen princess couldn't be abducted and
imprisoned oftener."
The opening of the door showed a long, black, gloomy entrance
hall--bare, bleak and draughty. Two people stood there--a grizzly old
man, stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who had opened the door, and
a grizzly old woman, just a shade less stooping, and bleared, and
wrinkled, who held a sputtering tallow candle aloft.
"How are you, Peter? How are you, Sally?" said Mollie's conductor,
nodding familiarly to these two antediluvians. "Is the room ready?
Here's the lady."
He drew Mollie, whose arm he retained in a close grasp, a little closer
to him, and Mollie noticed that, for some reason, the ancient pair
shrunk back, and looked as though they were a little afraid of her.
"The room's all ready," said the old woman, with a pair of glittering
little eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on Mollie's pretty face. "The
missis and me's been a-tidying of it all day long. Poor creeter! so
young and so pretty! What a pity!"
This last was _sotto voce_, but Mollie's quick ear caught it.
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