’Oh, yes, of course. Well, I got down to the ship and turned in early, as I was dead done after—forget what I’d been doing; kept half an eye on the door to see what my stable companion was going to be like, and then Captain Booth came in.’ ’Was it Captain Booth of the 4th Lancers?’ asked Brown. ’Salvation Army lass,’ said Ross laconically, and Brown laughed, as he used to do in Uncle Jasper’s woods. Suddenly somebody knocked violently on the wall. ’Anybody ill, do you think?’ asked my brother. ’Oh, no, sir, making too much row—laughed a bit too loud, I expect, woke up the other lodgers.’ ’What a rum place,’ observed my brother, and then there was silence till the water ran in the bath, and the house for a few moments was turned into a pond with a polar bear in it. Then I went to sleep. *CHAPTER VI* Brown has, apparently, been ’doing things’ the last few days. Particularly nice breakfasts turn up now, a maid lights my fire and the bath water is hot. Ross informed me that he had taken on the running of the show, but that, with the best will in the world, Mrs Tremayne could not supply butter, so he’d wired to Aunt Constance for a supply, and that if I could put up with marmalade till it arrived it would ease his mind. I have recovered my temper, too, and have decided that cavemen have their advantages. The one with whom my lot is cast at the moment knows how to stoke a fire, if nothing else. The millions of logs have begun to arrive, too, so at any rate we shall be warm. Ross says it’s a pity I didn’t live in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, for then I could have got really thawed on the days they lighted the burning fiery furnace. The other occupants of the house are two maiden ladies—’artists.’ Ross calls them the ’spiders,’ because they entice into their parlour all their friends and acquaintances, and encourage them to buy their ’pictures,’ and they borrow; oh, how they borrow! It is ’Could Mrs Ellsley kindly lend some ink?’ or ’We have run out of notepaper and should be so obliged, etc.’ Yesterday their newspaper hadn’t come. ’Would Captain Fotheringham spare his for ten minutes?’ Captain Fotheringham spared it with a very ill grace, but as the ten minutes became fifteen, and then twenty, and then thirty, he announced his intention of singing Hymn 103 outside their door. ’Why a hymn?’ I inquired. ’Because it expresses in concise, lucid, clear, and unbiased language the perfectly intolerable situation which has arisen,’ and he departed down the passage, singing loudly, ’My Times are in thy hand.’ Alas! this afternoon we are in deep disgrace, for the Spiders have given notice, and are going in about a week, because of us.