Lord Belpher's twenty-first birthday dawned brightly, heralded inby much twittering of sparrows in the ivy outside his bedroom. ThesePercy did not hear, for he was sound asleep and had had a latenight. The first sound that was able to penetrate his heavy slumberand rouse him to a realization that his birthday had arrived wasthe piercing cry of Reggie Byng on his way to the bath-room acrossthe corridor. It was Reggie's disturbing custom to urge himself onto a cold bath with encouraging yells; and the noise of thisperformance, followed by violent splashing and a series of sharphowls as the sponge played upon the Byng spine, made sleep animpossibility within a radius of many yards. Percy sat up in bed,and cursed Reggie silently. He discovered that he had a headache.

　　Presently the door flew open, and the vocalist entered in person,clad in a pink bathrobe and very tousled and rosy from the tub.

　　"Many happy returns of the day, Boots, old thing!"Reggie burst rollickingly into song.

　　"I'm twenty-one today!

　　Twenty-one today!

　　I've got the key of the door!

　　Never been twenty-one before!

　　And father says I can do what I like!

　　So shout Hip-hip-hooray!

　　I'm a jolly good fellow,Twenty-one today."Lord Belpher scowled morosely.

　　"I wish you wouldn't make that infernal noise!""What infernal noise?""That singing!""My God! This man has wounded me!" said Reggie.

　　"I've a headache.""I thought you would have, laddie, when I saw you getting away withthe liquid last night. An X-ray photograph of your liver would showsomething that looked like a crumpled oak-leaf studded withhob-nails. You ought to take more exercise, dear heart. Except forsloshing that policeman, you haven't done anything athletic foryears.""I wish you wouldn't harp on that affair!"Reggie sat down on the bed.

　　"Between ourselves, old man," he said confidentially, "I also--Imyself--Reginald Byng, in person--was perhaps a shade pollutedduring the evening. I give you my honest word that just afterdinner I saw three versions of your uncle, the bishop, standing ina row side by side. I tell you, laddie, that for a moment I thoughtI had strayed into a Bishop's Beano at Exeter Hall or the Athenaeumor wherever it is those chappies collect in gangs. Then the threebishops sort of congealed into one bishop, a trifle blurred aboutthe outlines, and I felt relieved. But what convinced me that Ihad emptied a flagon or so too many was a rather rummy thing thatoccurred later on. Have you ever happened, during one of thesefeasts of reason and flows of soul, when you were bubbling overwith joie-de-vivre--have you ever happened to see things? What Imean to say is, I had a deuced odd experience last night. I couldhave sworn that one of the waiter-chappies was that fellow whoknocked off your hat in Piccadilly."Lord Belpher, who had sunk back on to the pillows at Reggie'sentrance and had been listening to his talk with only intermittentattention, shot up in bed.