Wells' house in Enfield Wash, where they were met by the girl's two masters and several friends. The object of the visit was to prove if the description given by her of the room, in which she was confined, was correct, and if she could pick out from a number of persons the woman who had cut off her stays and locked her up. As to how far the room, as seen by Elizabeth's friends, at all resembled what she had told them, it is impossible to be certain. It assuredly was very different from the place which Alderman Chitty swore she had described, containing a quantity of hay, old saddles, and other things that the girl had apparently not noticed, even though she had been there a month; while there was no old picture above the mantelpiece—nothing, indeed, but cobwebs—and there was no grate, though she had sworn she had taken out of it the bedgown or jacket she had come home in. Besides,—and this was more serious—there was not a sign of the pent-house on which, she said, she had jumped after tearing away the boards at the north window; and one of the witnesses declared that you had only to push open the east window to get out of it with perfect ease, and that he himself had leaned out and shaken hands with his wife, who was standing on the ground which rose on that side of the house. But then the witnesses were not at all agreed among themselves what Elizabeth had really said, so again we are unable to make up our minds what to believe.
After she had seen the room, she was taken into the parlour where eight or ten people were sitting, and it is curious that now everyone tells the same tale. On one side of the fireplace sat Mother Wells, and on the other Mary Squires.
Mary Squires was a gipsy, tall and swarthy, very ill made and extraordinarily ugly, and altogether a person whom it would be impossible to forget. At the time of Elizabeth's entrance she was sitting crouched up, with a white handkerchief on her head such as women often wore, and over it a hat, while a short pipe was in her hand. Several more persons were on the same side of the room, in a sort of circle round the fire.
Elizabeth glanced towards them. Her eyes rested first on Mother Wells and then looked past her.
