* * * * * [Illustration: ONE UP!] * * * * * PETER, THE TEMPTER. Necessity does not make stranger bedfellows than some of the changes brought about by War. Who, for example--and certainly not such a born sun-worshipper as I--would ever have dreamt that a time would come when we in London and the Eastern counties would desire rain and wind with a passionate keenness once reserved solely for fine weather? Yet so it is. By reason of that foolish invention of flying we now, when we go to the window in the morning and lift the blind, are dashed and darkly thoughtful if no sky of grey scudding misery meets our gaze. "Please Heaven it pours!" we say. Just think of it--"Please Heaven it pours!" What a treachery! It may even come that we include prayers for storms in the Liturgy. In default of bad weather we may have to Take Cover; and it is when we Take Cover that discoveries begin and long-postponed adventures fructify. For years and years, for example, I had looked down that steep hill by the Tivoli site in the Strand into the yawning cavern that opens there, and wondered about it. I had thought one day to explore it, but had never done so, any more than I have yet proceeded further towards a visit to the Roman Bath, also off the Strand, than to threaten it. But I shall get to the Bath yet, because already, thanks to the intervention of the Hun, I have become intimately acquainted with Lower Robert Street, and the next step is simple. In the ordinary way, short of desperate impulse and decision--unless by some happy chance I had relinquished the burden of this pen and taken happy service with one of the wine merchants who store their treasure there--I should never have entered Lower Robert Street at all, for it goes nowhere and runs under the earth, and it is damp and mouldy, and the only doors, leading to this vault and that, are locked. But for all these disabilities Lower Robert Street is, in Gotha and Zeppelin times, a very present help and refuge. There assemble, with more or less fortitude and philosophy, the denizens of the Adelphi, thankful indeed that the brothers Adam established their streets and terrace on so useful a foundation; and there twice recently have I joined them. And an odd assembly we have made, ranging as we do from successful dramatists to needy journalists, with an actress or so to keep us manly. There for long hours have we waited until the "All clear" has sounded--or, at any rate, some have done so. As for myself, on the last occasion, taking advantage of a lull in the uproar, I crept away to bed, and, after falling into the sleep of exhaustion, had the ironical experience of being rudely awakened by the reassuring bugles and my night again ruined.