I didn't think that we had better do that, so I knocked again.
"All right, you can bring in the water."
"It isn't exactly your shaving water—in fact it's hardly time to get up yet," I shouted.
"What's the matter? Is the place on fire?" I heard sounds as of a person getting out of bed, so I said, "You needn't get up, it's only us. We wanted to apologise about last night. We're sorry you didn't sleep very well. Of course it wasn't altogether our fault, but still we thought that we should like to apologise; in fact we didn't feel that we could go to sleep until we had apologised; and—and we wanted to wish you a Happy New Year."
I am not sure that I did the thing very well, but I am sure that it would have sounded better and that I shouldn't have ended so lamely if Matilda hadn't been so tactless as to laugh in the middle. Somehow I got the idea that the apology hadn't been accepted in the spirit in which it had been tendered. Suspicious sounds came from within, including the click of a water jug; also the German family opposite seemed to be under the impression that it was time to get up—so we didn't wait to say Good-night, but slipped quietly out of the way. Miss Wortley's door and the door opposite opened simultaneously. There were two splashes like water thrown from jugs, and I fancy that more than one person got wet. It isn't easy to discover exactly what is happening when two people are shouting at the tops of their voices in different languages, but I didn't gather that they quite cleared the matter up to their mutual satisfaction.
EVERY AUTHOR'S WIFE.
["What is the first step towards literary production? It is imperative, if you wish to write with any freshness at all, that you should utterly ruin your digestion."—H. G. Wells.]
"What have you dined on, husband mine?"
"Chocolate creams and ginger wine."