Another knock stopped her here, and she turned to see young Peggy, immaculate and blooming, at the door.
"I just came to bring you towels, and to see that everything was all right, and show you the way to the bathroom," she said most opportunely. "We have a bathtub, you know, even up here in the wilds!"
Marjorie forgot everything; home, husband, problems, life in general—what were they all to the chance at a real bathtub? She followed Peggy down the hall as a kitten follows a friend with a bowl of milk.
"O-o! a bathtub!" she said rapturously.
Peggy threw open a door where, among wooden floor and side-wall and ceiling and everything else of the most primitive, a real and most enticingly porcelain bathtub sat proudly awaiting guests.
"It'll not be so good as you've been used to," she said with more suggestion of Irishry than Marjorie had yet heard, "but I guess you'll be glad of it."
"Glad!" said Marjorie. And she almost shut the door in Peggy's face.
She lingered over it and over the manicuring and hairdressing and everything else that she could linger over, and dressed herself in the best of her gowns, a sophisticated taupe satin with slippers and stockings to match. She'd show Francis what he was perhaps going to be willing to part with! So when Mrs. O'Mara's stentorian voice called "Supper!" up the stair, she had not quite finished herself off. The sophisticated Lucille had tucked in—it was a real tribute of affection—her own best rouge box; and Marjorie was on the point of adding the final touch to beauty, as the advertisement on the box said, when she heard the supper call. She was too genuinely hungry to stop. She raced down the stairs in a most unsophisticated manner, nearly falling over Francis and Peggy, who were also racing for the dining-room.
They caught her to them in a most unceremonious way, each with an arm around her, and sped her steps on. She found herself breathless and laughing, dropped into a big wooden chair with Francis facing her and Peggy and her mother at the other two sides. It was a small table, wooden as to leg under its coarse white cloth; but, oh, the beauty of the sight to Marjorie! There were such things as pork and beans, and chops, and baked potatoes, and apple sauce, and various vegetables, and on another table—evidently a concession to manners—was to be seen a noble pudding with whipped cream thick above it.
"The food looks good, now, doesn't it?" beamed Mrs. O'Mara. "I'll bet ye're hungry enough to eat the side o' the house. Pass me yer plate to fill up, me dear."