Part 15 (1/2)

This spoilt Anna-Rose's arrival in New York. All the way up in the lift to the remote floor on which their bedroom was she was trying to brush it off, for the dress was Anna-F.'s very best one.

”That's all your grips, ain't it?” said the youth in b.u.t.tons who had come up with them, dumping their bags down on the bedroom floor.

”Our what?” said Anna-Rose, to whom the expression was new. ”Do you mean our bags?”

”No. Grips. These here,” said the youth.

”Is that what they're called in America?” asked Anna-Felicitas, with the intelligent interest of a traveller determined to understand and appreciate everything, while Anna-Rose, still greatly upset by the condition of the best skirt but unwilling to expatiate upon it before the youth, continued to brush her down as best she could with her handkerchief.

”I don't call them. It's what they are,” said the youth. ”What I want to know is, are they all here?”

”How interesting that you don't drop your h's,” said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him. ”The rest of you is so _like_ no h's.”

The youth said nothing to that, the line of thought being one he didn't follow.

”Those _are_ all our--grips, I think,” said Anna-Rose counting them round the corner of Anna-Felicitas's skirt. ”Thank you very much,” she added after a pause, as he still lingered.

But this didn't cause him to disappear as it would have in England.

Instead, he picked up a metal bottle with a stopper off the table, and shook it and announced that their ice-water bottle was empty. ”Want some ice water?” he inquired.

”What for?” asked Anna-Felicitas.

”What for?” echoed the youth.

”Thank you,” said Anna-Rose, who didn't care about the youth's manner which seemed to her familiar, ”we don't want ice water, but we should be glad of a little hot water.”

”You'll get all you want of that in there,” said the youth, jerking his head towards a door that led into a bathroom. ”It's ice water and ink that you get out of me.”

”Really?” said Anna-Felicitas, gazing at him with even more intelligent interest, almost as if she were prepared, it being America, a country, she had heard, of considerable mechanical ingenuity, to find his person bristling with taps which only needed turning.

”We don't want either, thank you,” said Anna-Rose.

The youth lingered. Anna-Rose's brus.h.i.+ng began to grow vehement. Why didn't he go? She didn't want to have to be rude to him and hurt his feelings by asking him to go, but why didn't he? Anna-Felicitas, who was much too pleasantly detached, thought Anna-Rose, for such a situation, the door being wide open to the pa.s.sage and the ungetridable youth standing there staring, was leisurely taking off her hat and smoothing her hair.

”Suppose you're new to this country,” said the youth after a pause.

”Brand,” said Anna-Felicitas pleasantly.

”Then p'raps,” said the youth, ”you don't know that the feller who brings up your grips gets a tip.”

”Of course we know that,” said Anna-Rose, standing up straight and trying to look stately.

”Then if you know why don't you do it?”

”Do it?” she repeated, endeavouring to chill him into respectfulness by haughtily throwing back her head. ”Of course we shall do it. At the proper time and place.”

”Which is, as you must have noticed,” added Anna-Felicitas gently, ”departure and the front door.”

”That's all right,” said the youth, ”but that's only one of the times and places. That's the last one. Where we've got to now is the first one.”

”Do I understand,” said Anna-Rose, trying to be very dignified, while her heart shrank within her, for what sort of sum did one offer people like this?--”that to America one tips at the beginning as well?”