“Whatever was it that you really did say to Robin about her room? Young Bute came round to me on Monday quite upset about it. He says it is going to be all windows, and will look, when finished, like an incorrect copy of the Eddystone lighthouse. He says there will be no place for the bed, and if there is to be a fireplace at all it will have to be in the cupboard, and that the only way, so far as he can see, of her getting in and out of it will be by a door through the bathroom. She said that you said she could have it entirely to her own idea, and that he was just to carry out her instructions; but, as he points out, you can’t have a room in a house as if the rest of the house wasn’t there, even if it is your own room. Nobody, it seems, will be able to have a bath without first talking it over with her, and arranging a time mutually convenient. I told him I was sure you never meant him to do anything absurd; and that his best plan would be to go straight back to her, explain to her that she’d been talking like a silly goat—he could have put it politely, of course—and that he wasn’t going to pay any attention to her. You might have thought I had suggested his walking into a den of lions and pulling all their tails. I don’t know what Robin has done to him, but he seems quite frightened of her. I had to promise that I would talk to her. He’d better have done it himself. I only told her just what he said, and off she went in one of her tantrums. You know her style: If she liked to live in a room where she could see to do her hair that was no business of his, and if he couldn’t design a plain, simple bedroom that wasn’t going to look ridiculous and make her the laughing-stock of all the neighbourhood, then the Royal Institute of British Architects must have strange notions of the sort of person entitled to go about the country building houses; that if he thought the proper place for a fire was in a cupboard, she didn’t; that his duty was to carry out the instructions of his employers, and if he imagined for a moment she was going to consent to remain shut up in her room till everybody in the house had finished bathing it would be better for us to secure the services of somebody possessed of a little commonsense; that next time she met him she would certainly tell him what she thought of him, also that she should certainly decline to hold any further communication with him again; that she doesn’t want a bedroom now of any sort—perhaps she may be permitted a shakedown in the pantry, or perhaps Veronica will allow her an occasional night’s rest with her, and if not it doesn’t matter. You’ll have to talk to her yourself. I’m not going to say any more.