m to get
out some things for you, I had them put in my trunks, afterwards, and
some of my dresses changed into yours, as your frocks had all been worn
and mine hadn't. I told Louise to put my things down at the bottom,
some in each of your trunks, and I was pretty sure the man wouldn't
touch them, as you're a British subject. I trusted to luck that you'd
be too 'cute to say anything and give me away, if you saw the dresses
while your trunks were being examined, but I just _hoped_ he wouldn't
dig down to them. I dared not tell you what was going on, as Sally said
I ought to, because if I had you might have refused, or else spoiled
everything by being self-conscious. If you'd been with me, the Fiends
might have caught on to our little game, they're so suspicious; but
where you were, they never suspected any connection between us. You're
just a _Dear_."

I had been a Dear in spite of myself, but there was no use in making a
fuss now the Dearness was all over, whatever I might have done if I'd
known beforehand that I was to be a cat's-paw. Perhaps, if I hadn't
been given the iced stuff with the strawberries, I might have been
crosser; but fortified by that, I lived up to my reputation as a Dear,
during the half hour of the unpacking.

When my frocks all hung in a row like Bluebeard's wives, in the cedar
wardrobe, and I was left alone with them at last, my first thought was
to plunge my imprisoned roses in water; my second, to do the same with
myself.

The hope of tea (which hadn't been fulfilled) and a bath had kept me
alive through those two hot hours on the dock; and now I could choose
between several kinds of bath, each one more luxurious than any I had
ever known. At home there's either the big bath, in the bathroom, or
there's a tub in your bedroom, so it doesn't take you long to make up
your mind which you will have. But here there were so many things I
could do, that I grew quite confused among them.

There was the big bath, so big that two of our big ones at Battlemead
could have gone into it; and instead of climbing ignominiously in, in
the ordinary way, you walked down several glittering white marble
steps. It was very alluring, but as the marble tank was so vast, I
feared I might have to spend all the rest of the afternoon in getting
it full of water. It seemed impertinent to make a convenience of such a
splendid, early Roman sort of receptacle for a mere five minutes'
splash; a bath of such magnificence oug