It was far nicer than I had dared to hope. They fixed to run a tiny passage between the side of the hut where the room was to be placed, so that the two doorways into it could both be used,—one to enter into Geordie's room, so that he could run in and out without having to go through mamma's or ours, and the other leading into mamma's, from which we could pass to ours. And the partitions made them really as good as three proper rooms, each with a nice window. There could be no fireplace in ours, but as it was the middle one, and therefore sure to be the warmest, that would not matter, as there were two, one at each end in the iron room. If it was very cold, mamma said Esmé and I might undress in hers, and dress in his, Geordie added, as he meant always to be up very early and light his own fire to work by, which rather amused us all, as he was not famed for early rising. Indeed, I never knew such a sleepy head as he was—poor old Dods!
We felt satisfied, as we walked home, that we had done a good day's work.
'Though it couldn't have been managed without the iron room,' Geordie and I agreed.
And a day or two later we felt still more settled and pleased when mamma told us that Hoskins and Margery were coming with us. Hoskins was just a little melancholy about it all, not a bit for herself, I do believe, but because she thought it would be 'such a change, so different' for mamma and us.
She cheered up however when we reminded her how much nicer it would be than a poky little house in a back street at Kirke, or, worse still, away in some other place altogether, among strangers. And when she said something about the cold, in case we stayed at the hut through the winter, Geordie said we could afford plenty of fires as we should have no rent to pay, and that he was going to be 'stoker' for the whole family.
'You won't need to look after any fire but your own, Master George,' said she, 'and not that, unless it amuses you. Margery is not a lazy girl—I would not own her for my niece if she was. And besides that, there will be Barnes to help to carry in the coal.'
Barnes was one of the under-gardeners. He lived with his father and mother at the Lodge, but he had never had anything to do with the house, so I was surprised at what Hoskins said.
'Oh yes,' George explained, looking very business-like and nodding in a way he had, 'that is one of the things papa and I have settled about. We are rigging up a room for Barnes, much nearer than the Lodge—the old woodman's hut within a stone's throw of our hut, Ida, so that a whistle would bring him in a moment. He will still live at the Lodge for eating, you see, but he will come round first thing and last thing. He's as proud as a peacock; he thinks he's going to be a kind of Robinson Crusoe; it will be quite a nice little room; there is even a fireplace in it. He says he won't need coals; there's such lots of brushwood about.'
'I have been thinking of that,' I said eagerly. 'It would seem much more in keeping to burn brushwood than commonplace coals——'
'Except in my kitchen, if you please, Miss Ida,' put in Hoskins.