He woke in the morning with a sense of profound tranquillity, and thought with admiration of the Dean of his College, whose one rule of life was never to allow anyone to call him.  “This is worth a little subsequent trouble, if, indeed, trouble is involved,” he murmured to himself, as he turned over and settled down to sleep again.  But hardly had he dozed off when he was startled by an aggressive double-knock at the front door.  He hoped it would not recur; but it did recur, and was accompanied by prolonged ringing of an electric bell.  Feeling that his peace was broken, he put on his slippers and crept downstairs.

“What do you want?” he said at the door.

“Post,” came a voice.  Undoing the bolts, he put out a naked arm.  “Even if you are the post,” he remarked, “you need not sound the Last Trumpet!”

“Davies,” said the postman, crammed a bundle of proofs into the expectant hand, and departed.

Mr. Clarkson turned into the kitchen.  It presented a rather dreary aspect.  The range and fire-irons looked as though they had been out all night.  The grate was piled with ashes, like a crater.

“No wonder,” said Mr. Clarkson, “that ashes are the popular comparison for a heart of extinguished affections.  Could anything be more desolate, more hopeless, or, I may say, more disagreeable?  To how many a disappointed cook that simile must come home when first she gets down in the morning!”

He took the poker and began raking gently between the bars.  But no matter how tenderly he raked, his hands appeared to grow black of themselves, and great clouds of dust floated about the room and covered him.

“This must be the way to do it,” he said, pausing in perplexity; “I suppose a certain amount of dirt is inevitable when you are grappling with reality.  But my pyjamas will be in a filthy state.”

Taking them off, he hung them on the banisters, and, with a passing thought of Lady Godiva, closed the kitchen door and advanced again towards the grate, still grasping the poker in his hand.  Then he set himself to grapple with reality in earnest.  The ashes crashed together, dust rose in columns, iron rang on iron, as in war’s smithy.  But little by little the victory was achieved, and lines of paper, wood, and coal gave promise of brighter things.  He wiped his sweating brow, tingeing it with a still deeper black, and, catching sight of himself in a servant’s looking-glass over the mantelpiece, he said, “There is no doubt man was intended by nature to be a coloured race.”

But while he was thinking what wisdom the Vestal Virgins showed in never letting their fire go out, another crash came at the door, followed by the war-whoop of a scalp-hunter.  “I seem to recognise that noise,” he thought, “but I can’t possibly open the door in this condition.”

Creeping down the passage, he said “Who’s there?” through the letter-box.

“Milko!” came the repeated yell.