FORE:Alice seemed inclined to prefer her pomegranates to muffins, and had to be personally conducted from her work, and told she was naughty by Mr Silverdale, who sat on the hearthrug with woollen stockings and very muddy boots protruding from{102} below his cassock, for he had had a game of football with his boys club before his afternoon preaching. He had only just had time to put on his cassock and snatch up his shepherds crook when the game was over, and ran to church, getting there in the nick of time. But he had kicked two goals at his football, and talked to twice that number of penitent souls afterwards in the vestry, so, as he delightedly exclaimed, he had had excellent sport. And he poked the fire with his shepherds crook."When I was last here," said the Doctor, "I was in this very hotel, and had one of the regular servants of the establishment to wait on me. The evening after my arrival, I told him to have my bath ready at seven o'clock in the morning, and to bring a glass of ice-water when he[Pg 84] waked me. Exactly at seven he was at my bedside with the water, and told me the bath was waiting; and as long as I remained here he came at precisely the same hour in the morning, offered me the glass of water, and announced the readiness of the bath. I never had occasion to tell him the same thing twice, no matter what it was. Occasionally I went to Tokio to spend two or three days. The first time I went, I showed him what clothes I wished to take, and he packed them in my valise; and afterwards I had only to say I was going to Tokio, when he would immediately proceed to pack up exactly the same things I had taken the first time, or their equivalents. He never made the slightest error, and was a trifle more exact than I wished him to be. On my first journey I carried a bottle of cough-mixture to relieve a cold from which I[Pg 85] happened to be suffering. The cold had disappeared, and the bottle was empty before my second trip to Tokio; but my faithful servant wrapped it carefully in paper, and put it in a safe corner of my valise, and continued to do so every time I repeated the excursion."