Old Jimmie withdrew into a corner, turned to the racing part of the Evening Telegram, which, with the corresponding section of the Morning Telegraph, was his sole reading, and left Maggie to the society of Miss Grierson.
Maggie studied this strange new being, her hired "companion," with furtive keenness; and after a few minutes, though she was shyly obedient in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of the other.

Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the descending slope of middle age.

She was really a "gentlewoman," in the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise themselves as such use that word.

She was all the social forms, all the proprieties.

She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had a right to be, for she had been in this business of being a gentlewomanly hired aunt to raw young girls for over a quarter of a Century.
To the tired but practical eye of Miss Grierson, here was certainly a young woman who needed a lot of working over to make into a lady.
And though weary and unthrillable as an old horse, Miss Grierson was conscientious, and she was going to do her best.
Maggie made a swift survey of her new home.