Mrs. Melody Lanier was Mrs. Harper’s daughter and looked just as she must have looked in her younger days, with dark hair and a voluptuous figure that would turn any man’s head.  Likewise, her teen-aged daughter Wenda was a young, thin, and happy version of her, before adulthood had put the lines around her eyes or had put the grey in her mother’s hair.  Mrs. Lanier had lost her husband and Miss Lanier her father, when he was killed in a boiler explosion, while working on the Greater Brechalon and Northern Railroad.  Mrs. Harper had encouraged her daughter to come along with her and try to start a new life in Birmisia.

“You’ve heard me speak of them, and here they are,” said Buttermore.