"Who be you?" said she, in her rich drone, which had yet a twang of
hostility in it.

Burr Gordon ignored her question. "Is Miss Dorothy at home?" said he.

"Yes, she's at home, I s'pose," muttered the woman, grudgingly. She
distrusted this young man as a suitor for Dorothy. The girl's mother
had long been dead, and this old dark woman, whose very thoughts
seemed to the village people to move on barbarian pivots of their
own, had a jealous guardianship of her which exceeded that of her
father.

Now she filled up the doorway before Burr Gordon with her majestic,
palpitating bulk, her great black face stiffened back with obstinacy.
It was said that she had been born in Africa, and had been a princess
in her own country; and, indeed, she bore herself like one now, and
held up her orange-turbaned head as if it were crowned, and bore her
candle like a flaming sceptre which brought out strange gleams of
color and metallic lustres from her garments and the rows of beads on
her black neck.

Burr Gordon made an impatient yet deferential motion to enter. "I
would like to see her a few minutes if she is at home," said he.

The woman muttered something which might have been in her native
dialect, the words were so rolled into each other under her thick
tongue. Her small, sharp eyes were fairly malicious upon the young
man's handsome face.