Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/57

 "I have no towels and no soap, and no one has brought me any hot water."

"Sorry, sir."

"And look here—at this."

Sorrell looked, and gave a little lift of the shoulders.

"These confounded wenches. I'll see to it myself, sir."

He went out on to the landing calling "Maggie—Maggie," but no Maggie materialized, for she was somewhere below at one of the many back doors, and busy with the other sex, so Sorrell went to the chambermaid's closet, and collected towels and hot water, and purloined a new cake of soap from another bedroom my.

Mr. Roland was unpacking his kit-bag, and had thrown a pair of orange and blue striped pyjamas on the bed.

"Thanks."

That was all he said, but he smiled at Sorrell and gave him one of those quietly observant glances, and Sorrell went below feeling warmed by something pleasant and human and wholesome in the man. He wondered who Thomas Roland was, and what he did.

Meanwhile, Roland had paused in his unpacking, and was sitting on the bed and examining the room as though it interested him. Its deficiencies, its perfunctory slipshodness interested him. He happened to be interested in rooms, and he was a man of detail.

His mental comments followed immediately upon his visual perceptions.

"No wardrobe. Now—where the devil? Faded green paint,—dirty paper—strings of pink roses between black and white lines. One hook off door. Carpet—h'm—, I wonder what a vacuum cleaner would fetch out of it. Brass bed, one knob missing. Yellow chest of drawers, one handle missing."

He got up.

"I bet the drawers stick, and that the paper inside them is last year's Daily Mail."

He was right.

His observations ran on.

"Swing mirror plugged into place with a wad of paper. Blind torn. Japanese mats on floor need burning. Slop pail