"'Ow, Miss, don't you write your name?" breathed Million gustily. "Miss——"
I trod on her foot. I saw several American visitors staring at us.
The man said: "Your rooms are forty-five, forty-six, and forty-seven, Miss."
"Forty-five. Ow! Same number as at home," murmured Million. "Will you please tell me how we get?"
It was one of the chocolate-liveried page-boys who showed us to our rooms—the two large, luxuriously furnished bedrooms and the sitting-room that seemed so extraordinarily palatial to eyes still accustomed to the proportions of No. 45 Laburnum Grove.
What a change! What other extraordinary changes and contrasts lie before us, I wonder?
We were closely followed by the newly bought trunks; one filled with ancient baggage, like a large and beautiful nut showing a shrivelled kernel; the others an empty magnificence. Million and I gazed upon them as they stood among the white-painted hotel furniture, filling the big room with the fragrance of costly leather.
Million said: "Well! I shall never get enough things to fill all them, I don't s'pose."
"Won't you!" I said. "We go shopping again this very afternoon; shopping clothes! And the question is whether we've got enough boxes to hold them!"
"Miss!" breathed Million.