“YOUR aunt is in the back parlor,” said Caroline Priest. “Come this way. Are you tired?”
“No,” said Emily, following Caroline and taking her in thoroughly¹. If Caroline were a witch she was a very small one. She was really no taller than Emily herself. She wore a black silk dress and a little string cap of black net edged with black ruching on her yellowish white hair. Her face was more wrinkled than Emily had ever supposed a face could be and she had the peculiar² grey-green eyes which, as Emily afterwards discovered, “ran” in the Priest clan³.
“You may be a witch,” thought Emily, “but I think I can manage you.”
They went through the spacious⁴ hall, catching⁵ glimpses on either side of large, dim, splendid rooms, then through the kitchen end out of it into an odd little back hall. It was long and narrow and dark. On one side was a row of four, square, small-paned windows, on the other were cupboards, reaching from floor to ceiling, with doors of black shining wood. Emily felt like one of the heroines in Gothic romance, wandering at midnight through a subterranean⁶ dungeon⁷, with some unholy guide. She had read “The Mysteries of Udolpho” and “The Romance of the Forest” before the taboo⁸ had fallen on Dr. Burnley’s bookcase. She shivered. It was awful but interesting.
At the end of the hall a flight of four steps led up to a door. Beside the steps was an immense black grandfather’s clock reaching almost to the ceiling.
“We shut little girls up in that when they’re bad,”
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 whispered Caroline, nodding at Emily, as she opened the door that led into the back parlour.
“I’ll take good care you won’t shut me up in it,” thought Emily.

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