Old Mrs. Shilling was such a one. It was uncertain always even after a long knowing of her whether the wobbly head on her was all that made a strange thing of her or whether there was something queer inside in her, different from the others of them, different from all of them who always give to one a strange uncertain feeling, all the many fat ones who are made just like her. Perhaps that was all that was queer in her, that which is always queer in all the many fat ones who are made just like her.

The fat daughter Sophie Shilling in the ways one mostly felt her has many millions who are made just like her. The fat daughter Sophie Shilling was a little like her mother but her head was not yet wobbly on her. Sometimes there was something about her that perhaps came from something queer inside her. Mostly she was just an ordinary rather fat young woman and there are many millions made just like her.

As one knew her with her mother and her sister she was an amiable enough good sister and daughter. Mostly one felt that she was a very good sister and a very good daughter. Not that it was a family of women that as far as one could know them were very trying to one another. They seemed to have enough money to live comfortably in the hotel together. They had a poodle dog who was company for the mother. They never quarreled with each other. They did not have any troubles there at the hotel where they were comfortably living together.

Sophie Shilling and Pauline Shilling were sisterly with one another. Sophie Shilling like most fat sisters was afraid of the thinner. Sometimes it is the thinner who is afraid of the fatter when two daughters are sisterly together but most often it is the fat sister who is afraid of the thinner. It is not so much being older or younger that makes sisters afraid of one another, it is a kind of power that always one has over the other, mostly it is the fat one who is afraid of the other because it would hurt more if pins were stuck into her, not that the thinner is always in any way meaner, sometimes it is the fat one who is afraid who is the meaner, but there is so much more of her, there is so much more unprotected surface to her, somehow, it is that which makes her afraid of the thinner even when the thin one is really never nasty to her. This was true of the sisters Sophie Shilling and Pauline Shilling, the fat one always had fear in her but the thin one never in any way was ever mean or nasty to her. It is this fear that the fat one has in her that often makes the people who know her and see the mother and the sister with her feel that the thin one has mean ways in her. Not that the fat one complains of her but there is a fear in her, and often it is only a fear from there being so much of her, but when others feel the fear in her they are sure it must come from the mean things the thinner one does to her. So it was with Sophie Shilling and they were very sisterly together.

It was a month or so after the Herslands had come to the hotel that Mrs. Hersland began to know Sophie Shilling. She had met her goi