ow, so intelligent! The Ostend streets much
less dull at night. Feel relieved, in charity with all the world, now
that my prodigal portmanteau is safely reclaimed. Porter takes me
into a large luggage-room. Don't see my things just at first. "Your
baggage--_ere!_" says the Porter, proudly, and points out a little
drab valise with shiny black leather covers and brass studs--the kind
of thing a man goes a journey with in a French Melodrama! He is quite
hurt when I repudiate it indignantly; he tries to convince me that
it is mine--the fool! There is no other baggage of any sort, and mine
can't possibly arrive now before to-morrow afternoon, if then. Nothing
for it but to go back, luggageless, to the Hotel--and face that
confounded Waiter.

Walk about the streets. Somehow I don't feel quite up to going back
to the Hotel just yet. The shops, which are small and rather dimly
lighted, depress me. There is no theatre, nor _cafe chantant_ open
apparently. If there were, I haven't the heart for them to-night. Hear
music from a small _estaminet_ in a back street; female voice, with
fine Cockney accent, is singing "_Oh, dem Golden Slippers!_" Wonder
where _my_ slippers are!

_In my Bedroom._--I have had to come back at last, and get it
over with the Waiter. If he felt _any_ surprise, I think it was
to see me back at all. I have had to ask him if he could get me
some sleeping-things to pass the night in. _And_ a piece of soap.
Humiliating, but unavoidable. He promised, but he has not brought
them. Probably this last request has done for me, and he is now
communicating with the police....

A tap at my door. "Please, de tings!" says the Waiter. I have wronged
him. He has brought me _such_ a nightgown! Never saw anything in the
least like it before. It has flowers embroidered all down the front
and round the cuffs, and on every button something is worked in tiny
blue letters, which, on inspection, turns out to be "Good-night." I
don't quite know why, but, in my present state, I find this strange

John Holland Rose (1855-1942) was an influential English historian who wrote a famous biography of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and also wrote a history of Europe, entitled The Development of the European Nations. Rose was the basis for C. P. Snows fictional character M. H. L. Gay (see Years of Hope: Cambridge, Colonial Administrator in the South Seas, and Cricket by Philip Snow.)

Robert Grant may refer to: