Without, it was faintly light; within, it was brightly gas. What is less cheerful than the aspect given a room by the gas burning high at six o’clock in the morning? Rosina’s room looked absolutely ghastly, for it was bare of everything but travelling apparatus, and they were all strapped and waiting. She herself sat before her untouched breakfast tray and watched Ottillie lace her boots, while she dismally went over for the two hundred and seventy-sixth time every detail of the night before the last.
There was a tap at the door and Jack came in. He was tanned with his recent trip and had a thrilling new travelling ulster with carved deer-horn buttons. He had bought the buttons at the Tagernsee and had had an ulster constructed in Vienna, just as a background for them. He looked at his cousin with a buoyant air that she felt to be bitterly unkind, all things considered, and exclaimed:
“You must hurry up, my dear; the cab will be at the door in five minutes, and we don’t want to miss that train, you know.”
“I’m quite ready,” she said helplessly.
“Is all this stuff going?” he asked, looking about; “you can’t mean to carry all this with us to Genoa, surely.”
Rosina’s eyes strayed here and there over the umbrella case, the two dress-boxes, the carry-all, the toilet case, the two valises, the dress-suit case, and the hat-box. She did not appear to consider the total anything to be ashamed of.
“What’s in those two boxes?” Jack continued.
“Clothes.”
“Why didn’t you put them in a trunk?”
“You told me to send all my trunks frachtgut two weeks ago. I had to keep out some to wear, naturally.”