Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/35

 Tom, and Nicolas met her at the station, while Grace and I waited impatiently in Alice's library, where the lamp with its crimson shade made us both look flushed and anxious.

"I am almost sorry we promised to stay and dine," said Grace. "Judith will probably be tired; I am sure we were when we got here. How badly this dress wears!" stroking her silk sleeve thoughtfully.

I was engrossed in imagining what my cousin would be like, and whether she would be a pleasant addition to our party or otherwise.

"Tom tells me," Grace went on after a pause, "that he has found at last an apartment which will exactly suit us."

"Did he look at it himself?" I asked. "You know he thought the palace, with three drawing-rooms, library, dining-room, breakfast-room, banqueting-hall, ball-room, and two kitchens, was just the thing for us."

We both laughed, and Grace responded. "Yes, and such bedrooms that none of us would have consented to sleep in them! I wonder why all the houses we have examined have such miserable bedrooms. They don't look as if they had been built for sleeping-rooms at all, but are simply used for that purpose because one must sleep somewhere."

"Those were old houses. Alice says there are comfortable bedrooms in the modern ones."

"I wish we could find a modern one then," sighed Grace. "It is such a stupid way they have of pasting up a bit of blank white paper in the window, when