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"Sorry to incommode you," said their visitor, ironically. "I'm afraid your beds are dampish; perhaps you had better go to your brother's room: I've left the ceiling on there." They required no second admonition, but rushed into Gluck's room, wet through, and in an agony of terror. "You'll find my card on the kitchen table," the old gentleman called after them. "Remember, the last visit."
Consequently the people were unspoiled, and it was quite refreshing to be courteously received, furnished with a trout supper and excellent beds, and to pay therefor an honest price. The morning was lowering, and we had rain part of the day; but, thanks to our waterproofs and carriole aprons, we kept comfortably dry.
A hundred and fifty years was sufficient to do this; and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first hole was dug among the difficult roots of the forest trees, and the first little hillock of all these green beds was piled up.
The vast thickness of these beds, in some instances, is what attests the profoundness of the primeval oceans in which they were formed; the Pensylvanian grawacke, a member of the next highest series, is not less than a hundred miles in direct thickness.
There are no chairs in the rooms; during the day broad benches along the walls and oven are used instead. At night, the members of the household lie down to sleep on these benches, using any convenient piece of clothing for a pillow. It seems the Russian peasant of one hundred years ago considered beds a luxury.
What they said was new and wonderful to them as if nobody before them had ever thought of it. Yet that night, all over the Heath, in hollows under the birch-trees, and on beds of trampled grass, young lovers lay in each other's arms and said the same thing in the same words: "Do you love me?" "You know I love you!" over and over, in voices drowsy and thick with love.
She saw Brent's look of amusement at her seeming vanity. "I was looking to see if my shoes were leaky," she explained. A subtle change came over his face. He understood instantly. "Have you ever been cold?" she asked, looking at him strangely. "One cold February cold and damp I had no underclothes and no overcoat." "And dirty beds filthy rooms filthy people?"
Even among the well-to-do, beds were everywhere, irrespective of the number of rooms in use. Bathing facilities were meager. Copper and pewter basins were in general daily use, and also were employed for sponge baths occasionally taken in winter before the open fires. The chamber pots, frequently listed, served other necessary functions.
I don't perceive that they give themselves the trouble either to make their beds, or clean their apartment. The same spirit of idleness and dissipation I have observed in every part of France, and among every class of people. Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in Paris.
"When you come home to-night, White Cloud, bring some green rice to parch for supper." "I'll have some all ready for you," promised his sister. "You shoot a deer to-day, and to-night we'll have a feast. We'll ask grandfather, and perhaps he'll tell us a story." Soon Good Bird was paddling rapidly toward the rice beds.
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