"Mrs. Temple"—pause—"have you brought"—another pause—"your own soap?"
In view of the my-God-we-are-observed manner of enquiry, her hearers were conscious of an anti-climax.
"No," said Kathleen. She thought soap might reasonably be included in the price they were paying.
Mrs. Worley breathed hard ... one could almost listen to the weight being rolled off her mind. "Good.... I've put some ... in your room!"
Kathleen asked if they might be shown to their room to unpack.
They were told, to their immense amazement, that Mrs. Worley had lured them to Rapparee House on false pretences; that not one double bedroom remained vacant; and that she had arranged for Kathleen to occupy a single room in the left wing; and Gareth, an attic.
"My dear," in an enigmatic aside to Kathleen—"it does a man good ... for a few weeks ... I know ..." as they stood for a moment in the doorway of the little white-and-pansy room, down its separate flight of four steep stairs. The space was small but cosy; oak-pannelled; and containing a narrow bed, a grandfather clock, a chintz window-seat, and a quantity of framed texts. The combined dressing-wash-table was behind a pansy chintz curtain, permitting the single occupant of the room to be as reserved as she pleased even with herself for spectator of her toilet. The leaded-window looked down on to a small paved courtyard surrounded by murmurous trees. It was a room for a very young girl ... on the little bookshelf which hung on the wall, the former owner had left "Little Women and Good Wives," "The Lamplighter," "Carrots," and—souvenirs of a more adolescent stage—"Jane Eyre," "Poems of Passion," and the inevitable "Omar Khayyam," and "Pleasant Thoughts Birthday Book."
They left Kathleen there; and went on to inspect Gareth's quarters.
"Mr. Temple.... You're a poet ... poets revel in studios ... my brother was an actor, and—I know...." It was Gareth's turn to receive the enigmatic aside.
The attic was also isolated from the rest of the house; and reached only by a twisting rickety ladder from the second floor landing. It was a fantastic sensation to enter one's future sleeping apartment head first, via a hole in the floor. Gareth's imagination leapt ... looking around him, he forgot Mrs. Worley, confidential from the foot of the ladder.