d, we sat round the candle
outside Miss Wortley's room, but this was quite accidental.

We didn't know that she had gone to bed at 10.30 P.M. with the primary
object of sleeping and the ulterior motive of getting up the next morning
in time to catch an early train. We weren't to know that she had wasted her
time from 11 P.M. to 3.25 A.M. listening to a procession of revellers
retiring to their rooms. We had no suspicion that she was just dozing off
for the first time when we stopped to warm ourselves. We really made very
little noise, though we may have laughed just a little. The report which
has got about, that I tried to climb up the wall to see the time, is
inaccurate. The clock is not nearly high enough up the wall to render this
necessary, and I didn't care a button what the time was.

If we had known that the Germans who ought to have been asleep in the room
opposite to Miss Wortley would come out into the corridor and shout in
their nasty guttural language, we should probably not have tried to find
out whether anything was attached to the other end of a piece of tape that
protruded from under their door. It was quite a long piece of tape, and
there was something attached to the end of it, though we never found out
what that something was. Anyway, it was too large to pass under the door,
though we pulled the tape quite hard. We had just given up our
investigation and reached our respective rooms when the German family
arrived in the corridor and commented on the matter.

I can't see that we were really to blame because Miss Wortley suffered from
insomnia, missed her early train next morning and had to pay an extra half
franc for having breakfast in her bedroom. She was very unpleasant about it
and went round telling everybody that we had kept her awake all night. She
was one of those women who----But there, I don't want to be nasty, and
anyone who reads this will guess the kind of woman she was.

The next day was New Year's Eve. After dinner we took part in an Ice
Carnival, then we saw the New Year in, and then we drank practically
everybody's health. At 2 A.M. I was sitting in the lounge talking to
Matilda when a kind of peaceful sensation came over me, and I began to be
sorry that there was any bad feeling between Miss Wortley and us; so I said
to Matilda, It's New Year's Day and I should like to start it on friendly
terms with everyone, including Miss Wortley. I think I shall apologise to
her about last night