The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) very satisfactory. A glimpse of a bathroom was given. “You say when you want one,” said Miss Emily Rewster. There was a dining-room with separate tables, and there were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and there was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great number of arm-chairs and sofas wearing flounces so like the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster, and antimacassars so like her cap, and with so entirely her air of accommodating receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be at least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. The piano wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were polished tables bearing majolica pots of aspidistra on mats and little less serious tables for use, and there was a low bookcase with books in it and a great heap of illustrated papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into a rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; and there was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily Rewster to Christina Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen smoke.”
“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily Rewster, “very full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at dinner. But of course the season is drawing in now. Just at present we’re down to nine at breakfast and seven at dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But people come and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. One an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking the waters. And there are Birds of Passage as well as Regulars. Just for a night or so. Motor families. They take us en route. That’s where we have an advantage in being so close to the shops.”
She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my sister or I pop out at the last moment and get in things ourselves. When every one else is busy. We don’t mind any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.”
“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the war,” said Miss Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. You can keep yourself Quate to yourself if you wish, or you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the Drawing-room or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes people get Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.”
Christina Alberta asked an obvious question.
“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very pleasant people. A retired gentleman and his wife and her stepdaughter and two retired maiden ladies and a gentleman and his lady who has been in a forest in Burmah and so on.”
Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what a “retired gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really meant.
“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Royal Tunbridge Wells if you please,” said Miss Emily radiantly. “The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you know, by gracious command of his Majesty.”
“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound respect, and tried it over; “Royal Tumbridge Wells.”