Miss Matheson received them in a cozy little room. She was between eight 
hundred and nine hundred years of age, Nell estimated, and drank tea from fancy 
thimble-size cups with pictures painted on them. Nell tried to sit up straight 
and be attentive, emulating certain proper young girls she had read about in 
the Primer, but her eye kept wandering to the contents of the bookshelves, the 
pictures painted on the tea service and the painting on the wall above Miss 
Matheson's head, which depicted three ladies prancing about in a grove in 
diaphanous attire.