It did not take a very long time to show what Letitia meant to say and do. Mary thought the world had come to an end when she heard by return of post, as it were, a carriage, that is a cab from the nearest station rattle up to the door with every crazy spring and buckle jingling as if in fury, and heard a whirlwind in the passage, and, rising up, tremblingly beheld her mother’s little parlor fill, as by an excited crowd, with two impetuous figures--Letitia, pale with passion, and behind her the imposing form of the Dowager Lady Frogmore. CHAPTER XVII. The parlor at Grocombe Vicarage was but a small room and a shabby one. There was a drawing-room which was the admiration of the parish into which all visitors were shown, but Mrs. Hill and her daughters had too much respect for it to use it commonly; and the centre of their domestic life was the parlor, where all their makings and mendings were done, and where Agnes did not disdain to boil the eggs in the morning and make the toast for tea, both of which operations were so much better done, she thought, when “you did them yourself.” She had been making a dress for her mother; indeed, the very dress in which Mrs. Hill intended to appear “at the ceremony,” and the large old sofa which stood between the door and the window was rendered unavailable for all the ordinary uses of a sofa by having the materials of this dress stretched out upon it. Mary was in a chair by the fire with a white knitted shawl wrapped round her, much oppressed with her cold. There was a little tea kettle upon the old-fashioned hob of the grate. It may be supposed with what a start of discomposure and vexation the invalid of the moment started up when the door of this sanctuary was flung open and the visitors appeared. Fearful under any circumstances would have been the sight of Letitia to Mary at this moment, but in the drawing-room she might at least have been kept at arm’s length. She stumbled to her feet with a cry; her nose was red, her eyes were streaming, and the feverish misery of her cold depressed any spirit with which she might have met this invasion. Letitia on the other hand swept in like an army, her head high, her hazel eyes blazing like fire, full of the energy of wrath. She was a small woman, but she might have been a giantess for the effect she produced. After her there came a personage really large enough to fill the little parlor, but who produced no such effect as Letitia, notwithstanding that she swept down a rickety table with the wind of her going as she hobbled and halted in. But Mary recognized with another thrill of alarm the Dowager Lady Frogmore, and felt as if her last day had come.