"Jest wait here a minute," he said. "I'll go up an' turn on the light."
She heard him climbing a short flight of stairs, and a few moments later a flood of light streamed from a doorway above her head, amply lighting the little hallway in which Rebecca was standing.
The hand-rail to which she was already clinging skirted the iron stairs leading to the light, and she started at once up this narrow spiral.
She was met at the door by Copernicus, who was smiling with a proud complacency.
"Wal, Cousin Rebecca," he said, with a sweeping gesture indicating their general surroundings, "what d'ye think o' this?"
They were standing at the head of a sort of companion-way in a roomy antechamber much resembling the general cabin of a luxurious old-time sailing-packet. The top of the stairs was placed between two windows in one side wall of the machine, through which there was just then entering a gentle breeze. Two similar openings faced these in the opposite side wall, and under each of the four windows there was a long wooden bench carrying a flat mattress cushion.
In the middle of the room, on a square deep-piled rug, stood a table covered with a red cloth and surrounded by three or four solid-looking upholstered chairs. Here were some books and papers, and directly over the table a handsome electric chandelier hung from the ceiling of dark-wood panels. This was the source of their present illumination.
"This here's the settin'-room," Droop explained. "An' these are the state-rooms--that's what he called 'em."
He walked toward two doors in one of the end walls and, opening one of them, turned the switch of the lamp within.
"'Lectric lights in it, like down to Keene," Rebecca remarked, approaching the cabin and peering in.
She saw a small bedroom comfortably furnished. The carpet was apparently new, and on the tastefully papered walls hung a number of small oil-paintings.
Rebecca glanced into the second apartment, which was indeed the counterpart of its companion.
"Well, it wouldn't do no harm to sweep an' beat these carpets!" she exclaimed. Then, slipping her forefinger gingerly over the edge of a chair: "Look at that dust!" she said, severely, holding up her hand for inspection.
But Droop had bustled off to another part of the room.