Annie had already heard an authoritative rustling of skirts, and she was
instinctively prepared for the large, vigorous woman who turned upon her
from the picture she had been looking at on the wall, and came toward her
with the confident air of one sure they must be friends. Mrs. Munger was
dressed in a dark, firm woollen stuff, which communicated its colour,
if not its material, to the matter-of-fact bonnet which she wore on her
plainly dressed hair. In one of her hands, which were cased in driving
gloves of somewhat insistent evidence, she carried a robust black silk
sun-umbrella, and the effect of her dress otherwise might be summarised in
the statement that where other women would have worn lace, she seemed to
wear leather. She had not only leather gloves, and a broad leather belt at
her waist, but a leather collar; her watch was secured by a leather cord,
passing round her neck, and the stubby tassel of her umbrella stick was
leather: she might be said to be in harness. She had a large, handsome
face, no longer fresh, but with an effect of exemplary cleanness, and a
pair of large grey eyes that suggested the notion of being newly washed,
and that now looked at Annie with the assumption of fully understanding
her.

"Ah, Miss Kilburn!" she said, without any of the wonted preliminaries of
introduction and greeting. "I should have come long ago to see you, but
I've been dispersed over the four quarters of the globe ever since you
came, my dear. I got home last night on the nine o'clock train, in the last
agonies of that howling tempest. Did you ever know anything like it? I see
your trees have escaped. I wonder they weren't torn to shreds."