Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/64

46 up one flight of stairs and along a dusty corridor, carpeted in red and smelling of ancient histories.

“Here’s the room!” announced the clerk, swinging around a right angle turn in the corridor and pausing before a door at the end of the wing thus reached. “Number 22!” he added, as if announcing the capital prize in a lottery. He knocked for the girls, seeing them overwhelmed, and withdrew with a wink that might have meant anything.

“Stay out!” cried a feminine voice.

Rightly construing this as humour, Jane timidly opened the door. She saw before her a blowsy looking woman, in a pink kimono, its thin quality and flowing amplitude, as well as its heavy, once-white lace trimming, adding to the extreme rotundity of its wearer. Her hair was in curl papers, her feet in soiled pink “mules.” Beyond her sat a small woman, thin and tired looking, but animated, and still another with an indefinite face. Three men also adorned the room, all smoking; one of them was helping the indefinite woman to cram garments, that had not been folded, into a suitcase.

“Well, you pretty pair!” exclaimed the wearer of the pink kimono. “Say, Petey, what d’you