"Well be ye coming to your bed?"
So up the creaking stairs she was guided to a room, very unlike that
fresh white bower at Bowstead, large, eerie, ghostly-looking, bare
save for a dark oak chest, and a bed of the same material, the posts
apparently absolute trees, squared and richly carved, and supporting
a solid wooden canopy with an immense boss as big as a cabbage, and
carved something like one, depending from the centre, as if to
endanger the head of the unwary, who should start up in bed. No
means of ablution were provided, and Aurelia felt so grimed and dusty
that she ventured to beg for an ewer and basin; but her amiable hostess
snarled out that she had enough to do without humouring fiddle-faddle
whimsies, and that she might wash at the pump if nothing else would
serve her.
Aurelia wished she had known this before going up stairs, and, worn
out as she was, the sense implanted by her mother that it was wicked
to go to sleep dirty, actually made her drag herself down to a grim
little scullery, where she was permitted to borrow a wooden bowl,
since she was too _nice_ forsooth to wash down stairs. She carried
it up with a considerable trouble more than half full, and a bit
of yellow soap and clean towel were likewise vouchsafed to her. The
wash--perhaps because of the infinite trouble it cost her--did her
great good,--it gave her energy to recollect her prayers and bring
good angels about her.
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