Although everything was old and had been there obviously for years, the place yet reminded one of a bare chamber into which, furniture had just been piled without order or arrangement.
Opposite the door was a large and very bad painting of the two sisters as young girls, sitting, with arms encircled, in low dresses, on the seashore before a grey and angry sea, and Uncle Mathew as a small, shiny-faced boy in tight short blue trousers, carrying a bucket and spade, and a smug, pious expression.

The room was lit with gas that sizzled and hissed in a protesting undertone; there was a big black cat near the fire, and this watched Maggie with green and fiery eyes.
She stood there by the door tired and hungry; she felt unacknowledged and forgotten.
"I know I shall hate it," was her thought; she was conscious of her arms and her legs; her ankle tickled in her shoe, and she longed to scratch it.

She sneezed suddenly, and they all jumped as though the floor had opened beneath them.
"And Maggie ?" said the little lady by the fireplace.
Maggie moved forward with the awkward gestures and the angry look in her eyes that were always hers when she was ill at ease.
"Maggie," said Aunt Anne, "has been very good." "And she's tired, I'm sure," continued the little lady, who must of course be Aunt Elizabeth.

"The journey was easy, dear.

And you had no change.