“What does this mean, Jane? I can’t sleep on the floor; and what are you doing with my books?” I cried in one breath.
“I don’t know nothing about it, miss; it’s Mr. Rayner’s orders,” said she, with another irrepressible snigger at my bewildered face.
I was turning to the door to wander forth, I did not know exactly whither, to try to find an explanation of this most extraordinary state of things, when Sarah came in, her dark frowning face offering a strong contrast to that of the laughing Jane.
“Sarah, can you tell me what this means?” said I.
“Mr. Rayner has ordered the room in the turret to be prepared for you,” said she shortly. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to manage down here till after tea, as it’s his orders that you shouldn’t be shown up till the room is quite ready.”
I answered that I could manage very well, and they left the room. I said nothing at tea about my adventure, reflecting that perhaps some surprise for me was intended, which would be sprung upon me at a fitting time. And so it proved. While I was quietly writing in the schoolroom, after tea, Mr. and Mrs. Rayner and Haidee, who had not yet gone to bed, came in and conducted me in a formal procession upstairs, up the narrow winding turret-staircase that I had so often wanted to explore, and, opening the door of the one room the turret contained, Mr. Rayner, in a short but elaborate speech, begged to install me without further ceremony as the “imprisoned princess of the enchanted tower.”
I gave a cry of delight. It was an octagonal room, the four sides which overlooked the marsh containing each a window, while in one of the other sides was a small fireplace with a bright fire burning. The carpet was new, the wall-paper was new; there were two easy-chairs, one on each side of the fire, a writing-table and a Japanese screen, besides the furniture of my old room. It looked so bright and so pretty that my eyes danced with pleasure at the sight, and I could not speak while Mr. Rayner explained that now I should be high and dry out of the damp, and he expected me to become red-faced and healthy-looking immediately—that he had had tinfoil put behind the paper in one of the cupboards which was considered damp, that the picturesque ivy had been torn down—all but a little bit to hide the unsightly chimney—and that I was to have a fire whenever I liked now, and one every day when it began to grow colder.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you,” said I, almost pained by the extent of the kindness showered upon me.
I tried to include Mrs. Rayner in my thanks; but she hung back almost ungraciously, and seemed to have been drawn into this demonstration against her will. She was the last of my three visitors to leave the room, and in the moment that we were alone together, before she followed her husband and child downstairs, she said, seeming to be moved out of her reserve by the unaccustomed little excitement, and casting upon me a keen look from her great eyes—
“Are you not afraid of sleeping so far from every one? Or do you prefer it?”