he's been annoyed. Rather wish he hadn't been."

So we had come to the night of this memorable day, and to the
Honourable George's departure on his mysterious words about the
hundred pounds.

Left alone, I began to meditate profoundly. It was the closing of a
day I had seen dawn with the keenest misgiving, having had reason to
believe it might be fraught with significance if not disaster to
myself. The year before a gypsy at Epsom had solemnly warned me that a
great change would come into my life on or before my fortieth
birthday. To this I might have paid less heed but for its disquieting
confirmation on a later day at a psychic parlour in Edgware Road.
Proceeding there in company with my eldest brother-in-law, a
plate-layer and surfaceman on the Northern (he being uncertain about
the Derby winner for that year), I was told by the person for a trifle
of two shillings that I was soon to cross water and to meet many
strange adventures. True, later events proved her to have been
psychically unsound as to the Derby winner (so that my brother-in-law,
who was out two pounds ten, thereby threatened to have an action
against her); yet her reference to myself had confirmed the words of
the gypsy; so it will be plain why I had been anxious the whole of
this birthday.

For one thing, I had gone on the streets as little as possible, though
I should naturally have done that, for the behaviour of the French on
this bank holiday of theirs is repugnant in the extreme to the sane
English point of view--I mean their frivolous public dancing and
marked conversational levity. Indeed, in their soberest moments, they
have too little of British weight. Their best-dressed men are