Such enormous rooms as they were! It was quite a journey to go from one
side of them to another. The floors were of stone, with squares of
carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great
spaces they were supposed to cover. The beds and tables were of the
usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the
chambers were so big. A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of
banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then
betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door,
papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall.
These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she
had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to. One
gave access to a queer little bathroom. Another led, through a narrow
dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden. A
third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you
could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was
now turned into the dining-room of the hotel. It seemed made for
purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend
prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being
said about them in the apartment beyond.
The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to
bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew
all about the mysterious doors and what they led to.
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