And she did.
“Cousin Arthur,” she said one evening as they two sat with Aunt Polly before a crackling fire in “the chamber”—let the author suspend that sentence in mid air while he explains.
The chamber, in an old plantation house, was that room on the ground floor in which the master of the plantation, whether married or unmarried, slept. It was the family room always. Into it came those guests whose intimacy was sufficient to warrant intrusion upon the penetralia. The others were entertained in the drawing room. The word chamber was pronounced “chawmber,” just as the word “aunt” was properly pronounced “awnt.” The chamber had a bed in it and a bureau. In a closet big enough for a modern bedroom there was a dressing case with its fit appurtenances. In the chamber there was a lounge that tempted to afternoon siestas, and there were great oaken arm chairs whose skilful fashioning for comfort rendered cushions an impertinence. In the chamber was always the broadest and most cavernous of fire places and the most satisfactory of fires when the weather was such as to render artificial heating desirable. In the chamber was usually a carpet softly cushioned beneath, itself and its cushions being subject to a daily flagellation out-of-doors in the “soon” hours of morning in order that they might be relaid before the breakfast-time. All other rooms in the house were apt to be carpetless, their immaculate white ash floors undergoing a daily polishing with pine needles and rubbing brushes. The chamber alone was carpeted in most houses. Why this distinction the author does not undertake to say. He merely records a fact which was well-nigh universal in the great plantation houses.
So much for the chamber. Let us return to the sentence it interrupted.
“Cousin Arthur,” Dorothy said, “I wish you would mark out a course of study for me to pursue during this journey, so that I may get out of it all the good I can.”
Arthur picked up a dry sponge and dropped it into a basin of water.
“Look, Dorothy,” he said. “That is the only course I shall mark out for you.”
“It is very dull of me, I suppose,” said the girl, “but I really don’t understand.”
“Why, I didn’t tell the sponge what to absorb, and yet as you see it has drunk up all the water it can hold. It is just so with you and your journey. You need no instruction as to what you shall learn by travel or by mingling in the social life of great cities. You are like that sponge. You will absorb all that you need of instruction, when once you are cast into the water of life. You have very superior gifts of observation. There is no fear that you will fail to get all that is best out of travel and society. It is only the stupid people who need be told what they should see and what they should think about it, and the stupid people would much better stay at home.”