“You perceive I’ve accepted your kind invitation and am going on to London with you,” she said to Mrs. Rowe.
And, tapping her reticule with her gloved finger, she added a few words, inaudible to the rest.
CHAPTER XII
THE VERY HAPPY SIX
“See, she’s tacked on that everlasting bag again, Molly,” whispered Pauline, as the train started. “It always reminds me of a great tag on a little parcel, as if Miss Evans had been done up to be sent by express.”
That night they reached Besançon, an old Roman city just under the wall of the Jura Mountains. The hotel at which they stopped was very curious, with sleeping-rooms tucked away here and there, like swallows’ nests in a bank. Sometimes these rooms were entered from within the house, sometimes from without, by sly, crooked stairways.
Molly and Pauline could see no beds in their apartment, and ran after the porter to ask him where they were to sleep.
He smiled rather patronizingly, and threw open some unsuspected doors in the partition, which had been concealed by the flowery wall-paper. Inside were two single bedsteads, with maroon curtains of damask, and on each bed was the usual little down quilt called a duvet, which had an inconvenient habit of crawling off upon the floor whenever the occupant of the bed turned over.
Altogether the hotel was very quaint, and so completely surrounded by tall buildings that it rarely saw the sun.
“Papa says the house is centuries old,” said Molly, throwing up their narrow window.
“Well, we might have known it,” replied the ready Pauline. “We might have known it was built in the dark ages by the lack of light in it.”