She was a huge lady, in a purple dress, and with a sweeping gray plume on her big hat, and lavender gloves. She had the misfortune to possess a hair-mole on one of her cheeks, and Dot could not keep her eyes off of that blemish, although she knew it was impolite to stare. Mrs. Kranz came to the front door of the old Corner House and gave a resounding summons on the big, brass knocker that decorated the middle panel. Nobody had ventured to approach that door, save Mr. Howbridge, since the Corner House girls had come to Milton. “Goodness! who can that be?” demanded Agnes, when the reverberations of the knocker echoed through the big hall. “Company! I know it’s company!” cried Tess, running to peer out of the dining-room window. Ruth gave a glance about the big room, which they still made their sitting room in general, and approached the hall. Dot whispered: “Oh-ee! I hope there are some little girls coming to call.” There was nobody but this huge lady, though half a dozen little girls might have hidden behind her voluminous skirts. Ruth smiled upon the giantess and said, quickly, “Good-morning!” “Vell!” was the deep-throated reply—almost a grunt. “Vell! iss de family home?” “Certainly,” said Ruth, in her politest way. “Do come in. We are all at home,” and she ushered the visitor into the dining-room. The lady stared hard at all the girls, and then around at the old-fashioned furniture; at the plate rail of Delft china which Ruth had taken out of a cupboard, where it had been hidden away for years; at the ancient cellarette; and at the few pieces of heavy plate with which the highboy and the lowboy were both decorated. “Vell!” exclaimed the visitor, in that exceedingly heavy voice of hers, and for the third time. “I hear dere iss only madchens—girls—in dis house. Iss dot so—heh?” “We are the four Kenway girls,” said Ruth, pleasantly. “We have no mother or father. But Aunt Sarah——” “But you own dis house undt all de odder houses vot belonged to dot cr-r-ra-zy old mans—heh?” Ruth flushed a little. She had begun to feel that such references to Uncle Peter were both unkind and insulting. “Uncle Peter left his property by will to us,” she said. “Vell, I am Mrs. Kranz,” said the large lady, her little eyes sparkling in rather a strange way, Ruth thought. “We are very glad to meet you—to have you call, Mrs. Kranz,” Ruth said. “Not many of our neighbors have been in to see us as yet.” “I aind’t von of de neighbors, Miss Kenway,” said the visitor. “I am choose Mrs. Kranz. I keeps de grocery store on Meadow Street yet.” “We are just as glad to see you, Mrs. Kranz,” returned Ruth, still smiling, “although you do not live very near us,” for she knew that Meadow Street was at the other side of the town.