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jauntily and strolled through the door. He came back out a few seconds later, looking wild-eyed. “I’ll turn into Edgar Allan Poe if I have to sleep in that room!“ he declared.
     

Chapter 5
     
    Lily ran water into her tiny bathtub to soak off the dirt and smell of the train trip. Although the tub was very short and narrow, it was tall and by scrunching down a bit and leaving her knees high and dry, she could submerge to her chin in the cool water. If she let her legs hang over the front, she discovered that she could even wash her hair, though rinsing it out was going to be problematic. This was the first time since they’d left the Gramercy Park apartment almost two years earlier that she’d taken a full, all-atone-time bath. The hideous apartment in the city had only a showerhead and a drain in the cramped bathroom. There hadn’t even been a curtain around it until Robert rigged one up. And half the time the canvas curtain ended up falling on her like a moldy tarp. The water supply had been fitful, sometimes flooding the room, more often dribbling out in a cold, gray, gritty stream.
    How simple and spoiled she’d been most of her life, assuming that baths were commonplace. They were, she had learned, a fabulous luxury when you’re poor. And a pretty bar of scented soap was an intoxicating addition.
    She lathered herself with the bubbling lilac fragrance, which made her dizzy with delight. She still had no money. There would be no more scented soaps when she’d used this one up unless Mr. Prinney could be persuaded that they were a household necessity. She’d have to go on wearing the darned stockings, the shoes that were getting so thin-soled she could feel the ground through them, the everyday dresses that had seams that often gave out.
    But she could be clean. She could take a bath in privacy without hearing the toilet in the next apartment flush. She could smell nice. She’d taken all that for granted for twenty-two of her twenty-four years. The last two years had taught her otherwise.
    Robert would appreciate a return to these formerly ordinary amenities, too, but not as much as she did. Robert was a social butterfly who would desperately miss the bright, brittle cafe and polo crowd. While Lily had thoroughly enjoyed the parties, the fine champagne in fragile crystal glasses, the elegant dances and trips to Europe in the best shipboard suites, it had been simple enjoyment of what she thought life was like for pretty nearly everyone. How could she have been so stupid and blind to the realities? Robert, in contrast, thrived on that life. Those witty companions, the late nights of drinking and dancing and then sleeping well into the next afternoon were what sustained him. Even when he had to become the waiter instead of the diner, he’d chosen to pretend to himself that he was still part of that world. He’d chatter about the latest society gossip he’d picked up as if he’d been sitting at the table, instead of hovering around it with the wine bottle.
    For all his silliness and good cheer, Robert wasn’t stupid. He knew as well as Lily did that Uncle Horatio’s will had saved them from despair and starvation. He’d stick out the ten years, but would regard it as an imprisonment with a reward at the end that would let him go back to his previous life. But what would those ten years do to him? Would he lose his wit and charm, or were they so deeply ingrained that he’d come out of the required decade still himself? Lily’s thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the bathroom door. Mrs. Smith called out, “Miss Brewster, there’s a truck here and the men are asking where you want things put.”
    Lily said, “Ask them to wait just a minute. I’ll hurry.“ She frantically rinsed herself, threw on her clothes and rushed downstairs with a towel around her dripping hair. She identified and assigned Robert’s trunks and hers to the proper bedrooms, and followed the men up the stairs as they grunted and