For some time, I knew not where I found myself. Presently, as the dim light of the dawn penetrated, first through the folds of the fog, and next through the dirt of the windows, I recollected that Lord Ouiggins had advised me to stay with him at a fashionable hotel, adding that his own drag would call for us in the morning.
It was still of a good hour. I turned myself to sleep; but heard, with dreamy ears, the fall—or so it seemed—of cataracts of rain, around me, beside me, overhead. The sound gave me a strange sensation of thirst, which I cannot otherwise explain.
Instinctively, I rang the bell, and shouted “Selters! Selters! Selters!”
A tap at my door; and Lord Ouilliam, in half-toilette, appeared. I saluted him.
“Is it that the rain will make to be deferred the Courses?”
“What rain?”
“Listen, then!”
“That? Why, it’s only the men tubbing!” (Idiom untranslatable.)
“What did you ring for?” pursued Lord Ouilliam.
“But, for Selters then!”