“If you will be good enough to come with me I will show you your rooms.”
A door opened outward, disclosing a little square place with two cane-bottomed chairs. A man bounced out so suddenly that I nearly annihilated my sister, who was back of me. I could not imagine what this little cubbyhole was, but as there seemed to be nowhere else to go, I went in. The others followed, then the man who had bounced out. He closed the door and shut us in, where we stood in solemn silence. About a quarter of an hour afterwards I thought I saw something through the glass moving slowly downward, and then an infinitesimal thrill in the soles of my feet led me to suspect the truth.
“Is this thing an elevator?” I whispered to my sister.
“No, they call it a lift over here,” she whispered back.
“I know that,” I murmured, impatiently. “But is this thing it? Are we moving? Are we going anywhere?”
“Why, of course, my dear. They are slower than ours, that’s all.”
I listened to her with some misgivings, for her information is not always to be wholly trusted, but this time it happened that she was right, for after a while we came to the fourth floor, where our rooms were.
I wish you could have seen the size of them. I shall not attempt to describe them, for you would not believe me. I had engaged “two rooms and a bath.” The two rooms were there. “Where is the bath?” I said. The housekeeper lovingly, removed a gigantic crash towel from a hideous tin object, and proudly exposed to my vision that object which is next dearest to his silk hat to an Englishman’s heart—a hip-bath tub. Her manner said, “Beat that if you can.”
My sister prodded me in the back with her umbrella, which in our sign language means, “Don’t make a scene.”
“Very well,” I said, rather meekly. “Have our trunks sent up.”