“She's done it again!” he cried. “I'd move out of this flat to-night if I wasn't sure that any other would be as bad, this side of the middle of last century.”
It was, indeed, a sorry piece of work. The splendid pile of gray and white wood ashes which that morning had been heaped high over the arms of the firedogs, and which drifted high into each corner and out upon the hearth, was no more. A little pile remained, carefully swept into the rear of the fireplace, but the bulk of the ashes had been removed and the arms of the firedogs stood inches above what was left.
“I told her not to do it; confound it! I told her not to do it!” he muttered aloud, storming about the room. “Here I've been since Christmas collecting that pile of ashes, and it had just reached the point where I could kindle a fire with three sticks of kindling and burn only one log if I wished. And then that confounded chambermaid disobeys me—distinctly disobeys me—and shovels it all out!”
He rang angrily for the chambermaid, whose name was Eliza, and who was tall and angular.
“Didn't I tell you under no consideration to take away any of my ashes?” he demanded.
“But I swept the room into them, and they got all dirty,” she protested.
“Then don't sweep the room again!” he interposed. “I want the ashes left hereafter.”
“But the fire will burn better without so many ashes; they chokes it,” said Eliza. “Most people like 'em cleaned out every week.”
“Most people are fools,” said the Man Above the Square. “You may go now.”
The loss of his ashes had so irritated him that it was a long time before he could yield himself to the influence of the blaze, which leapt merrily enough, in spite of the too clear hearth. He filled his pipe and smoked it out and filled it again; he tried the latest autobiography and Heine's prose and the current magazines; and still his mind would not settle to restfulness and content. Then suddenly he remembered the date, the 20th of January. He took down his Keats. The owl, for all his feathers, might well have been a-cold on that night, too, for a shrill wind was up without. He glanced at his fire. Already the kindlings were settling into glowing heaps beneath the logs, a good start on a fresh pile of ashes. He snuggled more comfortably into his chair and began once more the deathless poem.