"Hey, everybody, the plumbing's working!" he shouted, somewhat unnecessarily. "Come on and see this cool bathroom!"
For some reason Portia had overlooked the bathroom up to now, and it did turn out to be an interesting place: very large, with two high-up diamond-shaped windows, a frieze of mildewed swans above the molding, and many pictures on the wall of young ladies wearing pompadours, shirtwaists, and long skirts, like Mrs. Cheever's.
The hand basin, made of Delft china, was patterned with blue carnations. Swan-necked faucets drooped above it, and on each side there was a broad slab of marble, veined and gray as Roquefort cheese. Traces of ancient soap lay in an ancient dish; and, hung above the basin, an oval mirror offered a green and speckled face to anyone who looked in it.
The bathtub was immense, porcelain encased in solid mahogany. "Sort of like a coffin," Foster said. He would enjoy a bath in this from time to time, he thought. It was so huge, he might be able to swim a stroke or two.
The chain by which he had recently released the uproar was attached to a large tank high above the thronelike fixture, which stood nobly upon its own gray marble slab.
"Yipes, it's the loudest one I ever heard," Foster said in awe, giving the chain another pull and releasing another crashing avalanche of sound.
"This is much better than a new-time bathroom," he shouted above the tumult.
Curious, Portia opened the door of a cabinet hanging on the wall and began to examine the bottles with dried-up medicines and lotions in them: the round bronze-colored paper pillboxes containing petrified pills. From time to time she read a label out loud.
"'Mrs. Baggett's Bunion Balm,'" she read, and then: "Dr. Cupthorn's Efficacious Cough Deterrent, for the cure of coughs, colds, bronchitis, asthma, influenza, wasting diseases, and scrofulous humours!' I wonder what those are?"
"Scrofulous humours," Foster murmured dreamily, as he tried out the bathtub faucets (very slow and trickly). "Scrofulous humours, scrofulous humours."