Even so you will probably have to make concessions. Your window will be hexagonal and your bath square. But your worries are over. The architect will choose a builder and between them they will build your house during the next six years, which you will spend in lodgings. It is a long time to wait, certainly, but you will find plenty of amusement in occasionally counting the number of bricks that have been laid since last time. And then in 1926, as you smoke your pipe in your study and gaze out of your hexagonal window, you will not covet the Paradise of ADAM, the first gardener.
Adolphus Minns resides at Kew And does what people ought to do.
In boarding trains his instincts are To "let 'em first get off the car," Then "hurry up" himself to enter, And "pass along right down the centre."
Though nigh his destination be No selfish "door-obstructor" he: Rather than bear such imputation He'll travel on beyond his station.
His unexceptionable ways E'en liftmen have been known to praise-- A folk censorious and, as such, Not given to praising over-much.
Small need have they to shout a grim "No smoking in the lift" at him, Or ask if he's the only one For whom the lift is being run.
Adolphus Minns, who lives at Kew, Does all that people ought to do-- Retires to bed before eleven, Is up and shaved by half-past seven-- And, when he dies, he'll go to Heaven.
Perhaps he's gone; I've never met His like at Kew or elsewhere yet.
The telephone bell rang just as I was beginning breakfast.
"What is your number, please?" asked an imperious voice.
In an emergency I never can remember my own number.
"Just hold on a minute while I look it up," I begged. Feverishly I turned over the leaves of the telephone directory and, cutting with a blunt finger the page containing the small advertisement that keeps my name before the public eye, at last found and transmitted the desired information.
"Don't go away," said the voice again, this time with a shade of weariness in its tone. "Chesterminster wants you."
I wasn't going away, because before Suzanne left me to visit her relatives in Middleshire I had vowed that nothing would induce me to do so. But Chesterminster wanted me. What should that portend?
"Tell them," I declaimed into the mouthpiece while I instinctively posed for the camera, "that I feel greatly honoured by their invitation and in other circumstances I should have been delighted to come forward as their Candidate. The Parliamentary history of Chesterminster constitutes one of the most romantic chapters in the chronicles of England; but just now I am busy writing verses for next week's _Back Chat_, so--"