CHAPTER 15.
Lord Belpher's twenty-first birthday dawned brightly, heralded in by much twittering of sparrows in the ivy outside his bedroom. These Percy did not hear, for he was sound asleep and had had a late night. The first sound that was able to penetrate his heavy slumber and rouse him to a realization that his birthday had arrived was the piercing cry of Reggie Byng on his way to the bath-room across the corridor. It was Reggie's disturbing custom to urge himself on to a cold bath with encouraging yells; and the noise of this performance, followed by violent splashing and a series of sharp howls as the sponge played upon the Byng spine, made sleep an impossibility within a radius of many yards. Percy sat up in bed, and cursed Reggie silently. He discovered that he had a headache.
Presently the door flew open, and the vocalist entered in person, clad in a pink bathrobe and very tousled and rosy from the tub.
"Many happy returns of the day, Boots, old thing!"
Reggie burst rollickingly into song.
"I'm twenty-one today!
Twenty-one today!
I've got the key of the door!
Never been twenty-one before!
And father says I can do what I like!
So shout Hip-hip-hooray!
I'm a jolly good fellow,
Twenty-one today."
Lord Belpher scowled morosely.
"I wish you wouldn't make that infernal noise!"
"What infernal noise?"
"That singing!"