CHAPTER XXV.

IN AND OUT.--BEFORE THE FIRE.--MEDITATIONS.--SURPRISES.--HAPPY THOUGHTS.--AWAKENINGS.--SLUMBERS.--BELL-PULLS.--BOOTS.--VALET.

DIFFICULTIES.--MRS. REGNIATI.--WHAT'S ON THE TAPIS?--MATCH-MAKING.

--CUPID.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Captain Byrton is out hunting. The Signor and Milburd are out shooting.

Mrs. Frimmely is out walking with Medford and Cazell. Miss Adelaide Cherton and her sister are in the garden with Chilvern and Boodels. Miss Medford is trying some new music. Madame is seated by the drawing-room fire, engaged upon some mysterious wool-work, which may eventuate in a cigar-case, slippers, a banner fire-screen, or a pair of fancy-pattern'd braces for the Signor. Jenkyns Soames is supposed to be in his room writing something on "Numbers," but whether in refutation of Dr.

Colenso's later Pentateuchical views, or in support of his earlier Arithmetical treatises, n.o.body has inquired, and n.o.body, particularly, cares.

I am engaged very busily in thinking. It occurs to me that I will join Miss Medford in the morning-room. There are some days when one finds it very difficult to immediately follow thoughts with action. On such occasions time doesn't fly, but slides noiselessly down an inclined plane, and one is in a state of perpetual surprise.

_Surprise the first._--You wake and are surprised to find it so early.

_Happy Thought._--Go to sleep again.

You turn round, snuggle down, and snooze. A mere snooze until they call you. It being their duty to call you, let 'em do it manfully, and you'll do yours.

_Second Surprise._--To awake again. Later than you had expected. Must get up.

_Happy Thought._--No use getting up, though, until you've been properly called, and the hot water's there. Besides, you'll be the only one down.

Employ the time, until the servant comes, in _thinking_. Think what you'll do to-day. Think what you'll do first. Put things in order in your mind, then when you get up you'll only have to do them one after the other, and there you are--or there you will be. Excellent plan, this. These arrangements being satisfactorily made mentally, you suddenly find yourself very warm, and then very wakeful, so much so that it is a

_Third Surprise_--on looking at your watch again--to find that it's an hour since you last consulted it. Odd. You _must_ have been to sleep again. Very odd. And "it's too bad of them;" (of course) they've never called you.

_Happy Thought._--Ring the bell for some one to come and call me.

If the bell is by the bed, this is simple. If it isn't, certain arrangements are as necessary as if you were going to make a journey.

Inquiries, as it were, concerning the route from the bed to the bell-pull have to be made. This ascertained, and the exact line you have to travel being now clear before you, it is evident that you cannot be so venturesome as to attempt the excursion without your slippers and dressing-gown.

Here commence manuvres to obtain both articles, while incurring the smallest possible danger of catching the slightest possible cold, or chill.

Then after a series of gymnastic efforts, during which you have nearly begun your day out of bed on your head, you are successful. It is then requisite to pause and take breath. This cessation of energy affords an opportunity for the servant to appear with your hot water, without your inconveniencing yourself any further.

However he doesn't come, and so you get out. Here the freshening breeze which blows over the threshold, under the door, and across the carpet, causes you, for one second, to hesitate, and then foreseeing that the longer you stop out, _en deshabille_, the worse it would be, you take precautions for the future, inspired by a

_Happy Thought._--"Cover the bed up carefully, so that it will be warm when I come back again." Aha! Then to the bell-pull.

_Fourth Surprise._--Odd. You had never noticed before, that this, which you thought was the bell-rope, is nothing of the sort; being a cord attached to the old-fashioned catch on the door, and originally hung within reach of the bed, which was of course in exactly the opposite position to where it is now. Where _is_ the bell? You cannot see the rope anywhere. Bother.

_Happy Thought._--To trace the wire running round the room at the top.

You _do_ trace it. It goes out at a hole and disappears. Trace it back again. It goes all round, and as there is no sign of a bell-rope, this article must be behind the bed.

It is. Struggle with heavy bedstead. Dust. There at last is the bell-rope. You pull it. You pull it again. You hear it ring. This is satisfactory.

_Happy Thought._--Get into bed again. Do so. Warm. Arrange mentally for reprimanding the servant severely. Such a waste of time. Here you have been awake since, goodness knows when, and no hot water, no clothes, nothing! And you may add, you put 'em outside the door so carefully last night, _on purpose_ that they shouldn't be forgotten.

Knock at door. "Come in." Door shaken.

_Fifth Surprise._--Why doesn't he come in?----Door shaken again.

Angrily, "Come in!"

Answer from outside, like the voice in a ventriloquist's entertainment, "I can't come in, sir; the door's locked."

_Yourself_ (in bed).--"No, it isn't. Push it."

Answer from without, as before, "No, sir, you've let down the latch. If you pull the string, I can come in."

Nuisance. Out of bed again. Pull up latch-string. Into bed again. Less warm now.

_Yourself_ (_or myself, severely, from bed_).--"You didn't call me this morning. And where are my things?"

_Valet._--"They've been standing houtside, sir, this 'our and a 'arf. I knocked twice, sir, but the latch was down, and so I couldn't get in.

'Ot water, sir, 's cold as hice. Better bring you some fresh."

[_Exit._

There's still an entr'acte between his bringing the hot water and my getting up.

_Happy Thought._--Well, I dare say it's all the better for me that I've overslept myself a little this morning. If Nature sleeps, depend upon it Nature knows what she's about.

This is in fact how it has happened that all the others, except the three mentioned, are out of doors. They've breakfasted hours ago. I haven't.

Madame Regniati puts down her work, looks towards the window, through which we can see the garden-party, and then refers to me inquisitively.

Presently she asks mysteriously,

"Do you see anything going on here?"

I can't help returning with, "Here, Madame Regniati! where?"

"Oh," she replies, in her short way, "_you_ see it, I know you do. Even Mr. Regniati has noticed it to me. For my part," she adds, rubbing her nose with the tip of a long knitting-pin, "I think it's a case."

I begin to understand.

"Miss Adelaide----" I venture.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Yes. And with whom, eh?" she asks, with her head a little on one side, and her thin lips compressed, as if she had got the information on the tip of her tongue, and was preventing its escape by sheer force.

"Well," I begin, thinking to myself it's very odd I haven't noticed it, "well, I should say"--really, I shouldn't say anything.