But mums and I both said we weren't at all tired.
'Well, then,' she said, 'if you'll be so good, we'll step through this way,' and she opened a door at quite the other side of the kitchen. 'You'll have a little lunch, I hope,' said the kind woman, 'after we've seen the rooms,' and she nodded towards a table, which was all spread with a white cloth and on it two or three dishes, one with a cold ham, and another with some kind of a pie or tart, and a big jug of milk. I was getting hungry, but still I cared most of all to see the rooms.
Through the door there was a tiny hall. It had a nice window, and a door stood open at the other end.
'This is the summer kitchen, as we always call it,' said Mrs. Parsley. 'I had a little fire lighted just for you to see, it's nice and comfortable,'—she called it 'com,' not cum-fortable,'—'even if the weather's chilly.'
It was a dear room—beautiful deep windows with seats round them, and nice old cupboards, one with glass doors, and a queer kind of sofa with a straight-up back and a long red cushion. The chairs were plain wood and everything was plain, but not a bit common; ever so much nicer than lodgings, you know, like what there are sometimes at the seaside with horrid flowery carpets all staring, and mirrors with gilt frames, and shaky little chiffoniers that won't hold anything. Here it was all solid and comfortable; there was nothing we could break supposing we did 'rampage' about, as nurse calls it. Even the kitchen fireplace was nice; I thought to myself what jolly toffy we could make on a wet day.
'Oh, this is a nice room,' said mums; 'nothing could be better.'
Mrs. Parsley did look pleased, and in a minute or two she opened a door we hadn't noticed. It looked like a part of the wooden panels, and there was a funny little stair.
'This leads to the small bedroom, ma'am,' she said. 'There's a door through it to the other two, but there's also doors to them on the landing over the big kitchen, which you get to up the regular staircase. But if the young gentleman was to have this room it might be a convenience for him to get to it without having to go all the way round and pass through the other bedrooms.'
It was a funny little room—very jolly though,—just a bed and a chest of drawers, a toilet-table, and a shelf across a corner for a washhand-stand, and two chairs. But I liked it very much, and the two big bedrooms that we got into through it were really very nice—carpets in the middle, and in one a regular polished bedstead with curtains. I wouldn't have liked it, but, as it turned out, Anne did. And it was very big; plenty of room for her and Maud too. In the other room there were two smaller beds; one would do for Serry, and the other for nurse.
And everything was as clean as clean—lavendery too—not a bit fusty or musty.