’Because it expresses in concise, lucid, clear, and unbiased language the perfectly intolerable situation which has arisen,’ and he departed down the passage, singing loudly, ’My Times are in thy hand.’
Alas! this afternoon we are in deep disgrace, for the Spiders have given notice, and are going in about a week, because of us.
They object, it seems, to meeting Brown on the stairs and landings, and to the number of baths we have. Since we arrived there is never any hot water left for washing their blouses. The climax came, apparently, this morning. Brown goes into the bathroom about 7.30 a.m. and cleans the bath. I saw him do it once at home, so I know what happens. He sprinkles it all over with some powder in a tin, and then scrubs and scours it till you’d think all the enamel would come off. And then he washes it out with hot water and a brush on a long handle, and then dries it, and cleans the taps, and wipes the floor, and puts out soap and heaps of towels, turns the cold tap on and then goes along to Ross and says ’Bath’s ready, sir.’
Then Ross goes and splashes it all up, and scatters soap about and swamps the floor, and then, after breakfast, Brown cleans it just the same all over again for me, only this time it’s the hot tap, and Nannie comes and says ’Bath’s ready, dearie, hurry up now.’ What would Ross say if Brown suddenly said, ’Hurry up, now, dearie,’ and if he wouldn’t stand it, why do I?
Well, for some reason or other this morning Ross went along to his bath before Brown called him. He had on his new dressing-gown. His taste is lurid and flamboyant, and Aunt Constance aids and abets him. This was a really scrummy one, dull purple silk, with pink flamingoes. And Aunt Constance had had bath shoes made to match with baby flamingoes on the toes. She does spoil him abominably.
Well, Ross, resplendent in his purple and flamingoes, lounged in a chair and smoked a cigarette, while Brown put the last polish on the taps and ’chucked the towels about,’ as Ross expressed it. Brown was silently absorbed in taps and Ross in watching him, when, suddenly, the door was flung wide open and a Spider entered in a red flannel dressing-gown, rather short, with a collar that had bits chewed out (I quote my brother, he means pinked) while its feet were thrust in red felt shoes. It had no cap on, but its hair was screwed into a tight, ’round button on the top,’ like the panjandram, and it was in a temper hot and hissing.