strangers rather than explain, and I was included in one of them.

We were for the play that night and I foresaw difficulties at the
public telephone, and George's first remark of "Hullo, hullo, is that
Signals? Put me through to His Majesty's," confirmed my apprehensions.

Half-an-hour of this kind of thing produced in me a strong desire for
peace and seclusion. A taxi would have solved my difficulty (had I
been able to solve the taxi difficulty first), but George himself
anticipated me by suddenly holding up a private car and asking for a
lift. I could have smiled at this further lapse had not the owner,
a detestable club acquaintance whom I had been trying to keep at a
distance for years, been the driver. He was delighted, and I was borne
away conscious of twenty years' work undone by a single stroke.

Peace and seclusion at the club afforded no relief however. George was
really very trying at tea. He accused the bread because the crust had
not a hairy exterior (generally accumulated by its conveyance in a
blanket or sandbag). He ridiculed the sugar ration--I don't believe he
has ever been short in his life; and the resources of the place were
unequal to the task of providing tea of sufficient strength to admit
of the spoon being stood upright in it--a consistency to which, he
said, he had grown accustomed. When I left him he was bullying the
hall-porter of the club for a soft-nosed pencil; ink, he explained,
being an abomination.

I also saw him pay 2½d. for a _Daily Mail_.

* * * * *