A modern trio in an old townHaviland-Taylor, Katharine
General
A modern trio in an old town
Haviland-Taylor, Katharine
Americans -- Italy -- Fiction; Florence (Italy) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
However, to get on, I followed Miss Julianna well down a corridor,
which ran straight ahead as one entered the door from the outside hall,
and was so long that it narrowed in the distance almost like a railroad
track, and toward the end of this Miss Julianna opened a door on the
left, and said, “Your room.” She said everything in a clipped way that
was most interesting and, to me, attractive.
And I went in.
I felt lots of interest about that room, of course, because I imagined
that I would spend a great deal of time in it for the next six months
at least. I looked around carefully, and then I said, “It’s very
pretty,” although I really didn’t think it was but I wouldn’t for the
world have disappointed Miss Julianna, who looked on and waited, I
thought, a little anxiously.
“Grazie, Signorina,” she said, which means, “Thank you, Miss,”
and after that she said, all in a level, and very fast,
“Down-the-hall-bath-room-with-water-which-runs-and-real-tub-dinner-at-seven-good-by--”
and after that she nodded her head and backed out.
Then I took an inventory which resulted in the discovery that I was in
a room that was as big as our Elks’ ball-room at home; a room which was
punctuated at long intervals by one bed, covered with a mustard colored
bed-spread, a bureau which had a mirror that belonged in the funny
mirror place in the County Fair, two chairs that were built for people
with stiff corsets, one chair that was designed for an aviator, (it
went over backward if you weren’t familiar with its management) a wash
stand with some stuff on it that Leslie--about Leslie later--called
“Medieval hardware,” a table with a bright red cover, a black marble
mantel and a footstool which I soon learned it was wise to use if you
didn’t want your feet to grow numb from cold.
In the exact center of the room was a little rug that looked about as
big as a postage stamp on a cabinet photograph case; and across from
the door was the room’s real attraction which I was yet to explore, and
that was the window.
I walked over to it slowly; and there, I leaned out, and after I
had leaned out--I don’t know how long--I came back and hunted in my
suitcase for the writing case that Elaine McDonald had got in New York
and given me for a going-away present. And, after I had addressed an
envelope to Mother, and put on “Jackson Ridge, Pennsylvania, Stati
Uniti d’America,” which Miss Sheila had told me to do; and after I had
told about my health and asked about theirs, and said I was safe, and
told of Mr. Wake who had helped me, when Mrs. Hamilton, Miss Sheila’s
acquaintance, had changed her plan, I described _the back yard_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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