Jasmine was not sorry to be spared the anxiety of another introduction so soon, and she eagerly accepted her aunt's proposal to dine earlier than usual so that she could get a good night's rest after the tiring journey.
"I've ordered _pilau_ for you," Aunt Cuckoo announced. Jasmine wondered what this was and hoped it would not be too rich a dish. The oriental hangings in the dining-room portended an exotic type of food, and she had been rather shaken by the train.
"But it's just like our own _risotto_," she exclaimed when the heap of well-greased rice sown with morsels of meat was put before her.
"Very likely," said Aunt Cuckoo, and the tone in which she accepted Jasmine's comparison was so remote and vague that if Jasmine had likened the _pilau_ to anything in the scale of edibility between Chinese birds' nests and ordinary bread and butter, she would probably have assented with the same toneless equanimity.
Jasmine liked her bedroom at The Cedars much better than her bedroom at Strathspey House. Uncle Eneas' consular career had naturally set its mark on his possessions. Strathspey House had been furnished first with all the things that were not wanted in Harley Street and then with the new and inexpensive suites that were considered appropriate to a holiday house. Moreover, Strathspey House itself was a creation not much older than Sir Hector's baronetcy. The Cedars was a century and a half years old, a rambling irregular countrified house with a large garden leading directly to the Heath; it possessed externally a colour and character of its own which in combination with the oriental taste of Eneas Grant produced an effect that Jasmine much esteemed after the newness of Strathspey House. In this bedroom there were Turkish and Persian rugs, thread-bare, but rich in hues; photographs with cypresses and minarets along the sky-line; paintings on rice-paper of bashi-bazouks and many other elaborate old Eastern costumes; and hanging by the fireplace a horse's tail set in an ivory handle to whisk away the flies. The Cedars was not Italy, but at least it seemed to recognize that somewhere there was sunlight. Jasmine fell asleep almost happily, and coming down to breakfast next morning after a struggle with punctuality she found to her relief that breakfast at The Cedars consisted of the civilized coffee taken in bed and that she alone was expected to devour eggs and bacon at the unnatural hour of nine a.m. After this first breakfast she, like her uncle and aunt, kept to her room.