In my extremity I even endeavoured to imagine that I saw things which were not there....
And then I saw something which really was there. It was my pin-cushion. It looked unusually crowded even for a pin-cushion, and I got out of bed to investigate the matter closer. I counted forty-five--yes, forty-five--little flags, and then memory came back to me. The previous day I had bought forty-five miniature Belgian flags at one time and another during the day. Each charming but inexperienced vendor had insisted on pinning my purchase wherever there happened to be an unoccupied space on my manly (thanks to my tailor) bosom. I remembered being conscious of a prickly sensation on each occasion, but I attributed it to rapturous thrills running about the region of my heart.
To make sure that my explanation was correct I went once again to the mirror and hastily counted my rash. There were forty-five of it!
Illustration: Flag-bearer. "FEEL COLD, AN' WANT YER SHIRT, DO YER? GARN! WHERE'S YER PATRIOTISM?"
I wish you knew my sister-in-law; she is probably one of the sweetest girls that ever breathed. Yet we are none of us perfect, and Grace has a drawback. She cannot forget that I am a poet. A fortnight ago she wrote to me:--
"Dear Edwin,--I am in such a fix. You remember Mary Smith? She has persuaded a young doctor friend of hers to start an album for original poems. He is such a nice fellow, though perhaps not very fond of poetry, if left to himself. But he has bought the album and has asked her to write on the first page. So she has come to me about it; and I am writing to ask if you would be a great brick and help us, because we get mixed up so with the feet, and I know it is nothing to you to write poetry. Could you possibly let me have it by return?
P.S.--_Entre nous_, she is rather keen on him, I think."
Somehow, when Grace's note reached me at the Local Government Board (she has a habit of addressing her communications to me there, in faintly perfumed envelopes much appreciated by the messengers), I was not in a poetical mood. For the past three weeks my branch had been engaged on the subject of Drains in the Eastern Counties, and that very morning I was completing an exhaustive minute dealing with the probable effects of an improved system of sanitation on the public health of the Borough of Ipswich. Still, I felt that something must be done. So I consulted Jones. Jones is, like myself, a poet; he is also the official whom Ministers of the Crown are accustomed, when hard pressed, to consult on the subject of Infantile Mortality amongst Suburban Undertakers; why, I cannot say, though many think it is on the strength of his having been a Philpott's Theological Prizeman at Oxford. I scribbled him a line in pencil: "Come over into number thirteen and help us; and bring your cigarettes." He came, and before leaving the office at 4.30 I was enabled to comply with my sister-in-law's request. I wrote as follows:--