"Henry Whitman!" Henry turned around obediently.
"Where are you going ?" asked Sylvia.
She stood under the columns of the front porch, a meagre little figure of a woman dressed with severe and immaculate cheapness in a purple calico wrapper, with a checked gingham apron tied in a prim bow at her back.

Her hair was very smooth.

She was New England austerity and conservatism embodied.

She was terrifying, although it would have puzzled anybody to have told why.

Certain it was that no man would have had the temerity to contest her authority as she stood there.