“Dash it!  I’m at Wilkins’s—­I’ll be at Wilkins’s!”

“Certainly, sir!  Thank you very much, sir.”

The hotel-valet was retiring when Edward Henry called him back.

“Stop a moment.  I’m just going out.  Help me on with my overcoat, will you?”

The man jumped.

“And you might get me a tooth-brush,” Edward Henry airily suggested.  “And I’ve a letter for the post.”

As he walked down Devonshire Square in the dark he hummed a tune; certain sign that he was self-conscious, uneasy, and yet not unhappy.  At a small but expensive hosier’s in a side street he bought a shirt and a suit of pyjamas, and also permitted himself to be tempted by a special job line of hair-brushes that the hosier had in his fancy department.  On hearing the powerful word “Wilkins’s,” the hosier promised with passionate obsequiousness that the goods should be delivered instantly.

Edward Henry cooled his excitement by an extended stroll, and finally re-entered the outer hall of the hotel at half-past seven, and sat down therein to see the world.  He knew by instinct that the boldest lounge-suit must not at that hour penetrate further into the public rooms of Wilkins’s.

The world at its haughtiest was driving up to Wilkins’s to eat its dinner in the unrivalled restaurant, and often guests staying at the hotel came into the outer hall to greet invited friends.  And Edward Henry was so overfaced by visions of woman’s brilliance and man’s utter correctness that he scarcely knew where to look—­so apologetic was he for his grey lounge-suit and the creases in his boots.  In less than a quarter of an hour he appreciated with painful clearness that his entire conception of existence had been wrong, and that he must begin again at the beginning.  Nothing in his luggage at the Majestic would do.  His socks would not do, nor his shoes, nor the braid on his trousers, nor his cuff-links, nor his ready-made white bow, nor the number of studs in his shirt-front, nor the collar of his coat.  Nothing!  Nothing!  To-morrow would be a full day.

He ventured apologetically into the lift.  In his private corridor a young man respectfully waited, hat in hand, the paternal red-and-black waistcoat by his side for purposes of introduction.  The young man was wearing a rather shabby blue suit, but a rich and distinguished overcoat that fitted him ill.  In another five minutes Edward Henry had engaged a skilled valet, aged twenty-four, name Joseph, with a testimonial of efficiency from Sir Nicholas Winkworth, Bart., at a salary of a pound a week and all found.

Joseph seemed to await instructions.  And Edward Henry was placed in a new quandary.  He knew not whether the small bedroom in the suite was for a child, or for his wife’s maid, or for his valet.  Quite probably it would be a sacrilegious defiance of precedent to put a valet in the small bedroom.  Quite probably Wilkins’s had a floor for private valets in the roof.  Again, quite probably, the small bedroom might be, after all, specially destined for valets!  He could not decide, and the most precious thing in the universe to him in that crisis was his reputation as a man-about-town in the eyes of Joseph.