We drove quickly home.

But as we neared the flat I suddenly became nervous about Algernon.  I could not take him, red and undraped, past the hall-porter, past all the other residents who might spring out at me on the stairs.  Accordingly, I placed the block of ice on the seat, took off some of its “Morning Post,” and wrapped Algernon up decently.  Then I sprang out, gave the man a coin, and hastened into the building.

* * * * *

“Bless you,” said Celia, “have you got it?  How sweet of you!” And she took my parcel from me.  “Now we shall be able—­Why, what’s this?”

I looked at it closely.

“It’s—­it’s a lobster,” I said.  “Didn’t you say lobster?”

“I said ice.”

“Oh,” I said, “oh, I didn’t understand.  I thought you said lobster.”

“You can’t put lobster in cider cup,” said Celia severely.

Of course I quite see that.  It was foolish of me.  However, it’s pleasant to think that the taxi must have been nice and cool for the next man.

“WRONGLY ATTRIBUTED”

You’ve heard of Willy Ferrero, the Boy Conductor?  A musical prodigy, seven years old, who will order the fifth oboe out of the Albert Hall as soon as look at him.  Well, he has a rival.

Willy, as perhaps you know, does not play any instrument himself; he only conducts.  His rival (Johnny, as I think of him) does not conduct as yet; at least, not audibly.  His line is the actual manipulation of the pianoforte—­the Paderewski touch.  Johnny lives in the flat below, and I hear him touching.

On certain mornings in the week—­no need to specify them—­I enter my library and give myself up to literary composition.  On the same mornings little Johnny enters his music-room (underneath) and gives himself up to musical composition.  Thus we are at work together.

The worst of literary composition is this:  that when you have got hold of what you feel is a really powerful idea, you find suddenly that you have been forestalled by some earlier writer—­Sophocles or Shakespeare or George R. Sims.  Then you have to think again.  This frequently happens to me upstairs; and downstairs poor Johnny will find to his horror one day that his great work has already been given to the world by another—­a certain Dr. John Bull.

Johnny, in fact, is discovering “God Save the King” with one finger.

As I dip my pen in the ink and begin to write, Johnny strikes up.  On the first day when this happened, some three months ago, I rose from my chair and stood stiffly through the performance—­an affair of some minutes, owing to a little difficulty with “Send him victorious,” a line which always bothers Johnny.  However, he got right through it at last, after harking back no more than twice, and I sat down to my work again.  Generally speaking, “God Save the King” ends a show; it would be disloyal to play any other tune after that.  Johnny quite saw this ... and so began to play “God Save the King” again.