_At the Station._--I have accompanied the Porter to the Terminus, such a pleasant helpful fellow, so intelligent! The Ostend streets much less dull at night. Feel relieved, in charity with all the world, now that my prodigal portmanteau is safely reclaimed. Porter takes me into a large luggage-room. Don't see my things just at first. "Your baggage--_ere!_" says the Porter, proudly, and points out a little drab valise with shiny black leather covers and brass studs--the kind of thing a man goes a journey with in a French Melodrama! He is quite hurt when I repudiate it indignantly; he tries to convince me that it is mine--the fool! There is no other baggage of any sort, and mine can't possibly arrive now before to-morrow afternoon, if then. Nothing for it but to go back, luggageless, to the Hotel--and face that confounded Waiter. Walk about the streets. Somehow I don't feel quite up to going back to the Hotel just yet. The shops, which are small and rather dimly lighted, depress me. There is no theatre, nor _café chantant_ open apparently. If there were, I haven't the heart for them to-night. Hear music from a small _estaminet_ in a back street; female voice, with fine Cockney accent, is singing "_Oh, dem Golden Slippers!_" Wonder where _my_ slippers are! _In my Bedroom._--I have had to come back at last, and get it over with the Waiter. If he felt _any_ surprise, I think it was to see me back at all. I have had to ask him if he could get me some sleeping-things to pass the night in. _And_ a piece of soap. Humiliating, but unavoidable. He promised, but he has not brought them. Probably this last request has done for me, and he is now communicating with the police.... A tap at my door. "Please, de tings!" says the Waiter. I have wronged him. He has brought me _such_ a nightgown! Never saw anything in the least like it before. It has flowers embroidered all down the front and round the cuffs, and on every button something is worked in tiny blue letters, which, on inspection, turns out to be "Good-night." I don't quite know why, but, in my present state, I find this strangely consoling, and even touching--like a benediction. After all, he _must_ believe in me, or he would hardly confide his purple and fine linen to me like this. Go to bed gorgeous, and dream that my portmanteau, bag, and self-respect are all restored to me by the afternoon boat.... There must be something in dreams, for, oddly enough, this is exactly what _does_ happen. Next morning, at breakfast, I am handed a mysterious and, at first sight, rather alarming telegram from the Station-master at Dover. "Your bones will be sent on next boat." Suspect the word in the original was "_boxes_." But they may call them what they like, so long as I get them back again. * * * * *