“What!” I cried, “and parade hotel passages in search of the bath looking like a clown out of a circus?  No, thank you.”

“You must make me a pattern then,” said Agnes, “or I shan’t know what to do.”

I can’t make patterns, but I can, and I did, make plans of ground and first-floor levels, a section and back and front elevations, all to a scale of one inch to the foot exactly.  I also made a full-size detail of a toggle-and-cinch gear linking the upper storey to the lower.

“I think,” Agnes said, “you had better come to the shop and choose the material.”

I thought so too.  I wanted something gaudy that would make me feel cheerful when I woke in the morning; but I also had another idea in my mind. Mangle-proof buttons!  Have the things been invented yet?

The archbishop who attended to us deprecated the idea of india-rubber buttons.

“What kind are you now using?” he asked solicitously.

“At present, on No. 2,” I said, “I am using splinters of mother-of-pearl.  Last week, with No. 1, I used a steel ring hanging by its rim to a shred of linen, two safeties, and a hairpin found on the floor.”

I chose a flannel with broad green and violet stripes, and very large buttons of vitrified brick which I hoped might break the mangle.  These buttons were emerald in colour and gave me a new idea. Trimmings.

“I want to look right if the house catches fire,” I told Agnes.  “Green sateen collar to match the buttons—­”

“And for the wristbands,” said Agnes, catching my enthusiasm.

“And for the wristbands,” I agreed; “but,” I added, “not at the ankles.  That would make the other people in the street expect me to dance to them, and I don’t know how to.”

And now the good work is complete.  Toggle and cinch perform their proud functions, and I sleep undisturbed by Arctic nightmares, for I have substituted green ties for the stoneware buttons which reduced my vitality by absorbing heat.  My only trouble is my increasing reluctance to rise in the morning.  I don’t like changing out of my beautiful things so early in the day.  I am beginning to want breakfast in bed.

* * * * *

AT THE DUMP.

(LINES TO THE N.C.O.  IN CHARGE.)

  Now is the hour of dusk and mist and midges,
    Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze,
  And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges,
    And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays;
  Now no shell circulates, but all men brood
      Over their evening food;
  The bats flit warily and owl and rat
    With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue,
  And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat
    In this hushed moment with a man like you.