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.”

“Very good, madam.”

She went away, and then we rang the bell and began to order what were to us the barest necessities of life.  We were tired and lame and sleepy from a night spent at the pier landing the luggage, and we wanted things with which to make ourselves comfortable.

There was a pocket edition of a fireplace, and they brought us a hatful of the vilest soft coal, which peppered everything in the rooms with soot.

We climbed over our trunks to sit by this imitation of a fire, only to find that there was nothing to sit on but the most uncompromising of straight-backed chairs.

We groaned as we took in the situation.  To our poor, racked frames a coal-hod would not have suggested more discomfort.  We dragged up our hampers, packed with steamer-rugs and pillows, and my sister sat on hers while I took another turn at the bell.  While the maid is answering this bell I shall have plenty of time to tell you what we afterwards discovered the process of bell-ringing in an English hotel to be.

We rang our bell.  Presently we heard the most horrible gong, such as we use on our patrol wagons and fire-engines at home.  This clanged four times.  Then a second bell down the hall answered it.  Then feet flew by our door.  At this juncture my sister and I prepared to let ourselves down the fire-escape.  But we soon discovered that those flying feet belonged to the poor maid, whom that gong had signalled that she was wanted on the fourth floor.  She flew to a speaking-tube and asked who on the fourth floor wanted her.  She was then given the number of our room, when she rang a bell to signify that our call was answered, by which time she was at liberty, and knocked at our door, saying, in her soft English voice, “Did you ring, miss?”

We told her we wanted rocking-chairs.  She said there was not one in the house.  Then easy-chairs, we said, or anything cushioned or low or comfortable.  She said the housekeeper had no easier chairs.

We sat down on our hampers, and my sister leaned against the corner of the wardrobe with a pillow at her back to keep from being cut in two.  I propped my back against the wash-stand, which did very well, except that the wash-stand occasionally slid away from me.