Above the mantel hung a portrait of Mrs. Brace-Gideon; a well-corseted lady with a pink, opinionated face. She was sitting bolt-upright in a chair, wearing an embroidered gown and holding a fan. "And there she is going to stay," said Mrs. Blake. "Because in her way, and though she could never know it, Mrs. Brace-Gideon has been a fairy godmother to this family." "Indeed she has," said Mr. Blake. When Portia went upstairs to look at her own round room in the turret, she screamed with delight. "Mother, how did you _know_ I wanted pink?" "All girls want pink," replied her mother sensibly. Just under the curving open window a giant rhododendron had put out hundreds of bouquets of flowers, delicately tinted: not quite white, less definite than pink. "How lucky that they should turn out to be that color instead of the usual magenta," Mrs. Blake mused, sitting on the window seat and leaning her arms on the sill. "How lucky, really, about everything." "I know," Portia said, staring dreamily out over her mother's head at the green lawn, the green orchard, the green woods beyond. Their mood of quiet delight was shattered by a tremendous outburst of rushing waters. It was Foster trying out the plumbing to see if it would work. "Hey, everybody, the plumbing's working!" he shouted, somewhat unnecessarily. "Come on and see this cool bathroom!" For some reason Portia had overlooked the bathroom up to now, and it did turn out to be an interesting place: very large, with two high-up diamond-shaped windows, a frieze of mildewed swans above the molding, and many pictures on the wall of young ladies wearing pompadours, shirtwaists, and long skirts, like Mrs. Cheever's. The hand basin, made of Delft china, was patterned with blue carnations. Swan-necked faucets drooped above it, and on each side there was a broad slab of marble, veined and gray as Roquefort cheese. Traces of ancient soap lay in an ancient dish; and, hung above the basin, an oval mirror offered a green and speckled face to anyone who looked in it. The bathtub was immense, porcelain encased in solid mahogany. "Sort of like a coffin," Foster said. He would enjoy a bath in this from time to time, he thought. It was so huge, he might be able to swim a stroke or two. The chain by which he had recently released the uproar was attached to a large tank high above the thronelike fixture, which stood nobly upon its own gray marble slab. "Yipes, it's the loudest one I ever heard," Foster said in awe, giving the chain another pull and releasing another crashing avalanche of sound. "This is much better than a new-time bathroom," he shouted above the tumult. Curious, Portia opened the door of a cabinet hanging on the wall and began to examine the bottles with dried-up medicines and lotions in them: the round bronze-colored paper pillboxes containing petrified pills. From time to time she read a label out loud.