; we may have been a little thoughtless."

"I don't see what there is to apologise for," said Matilda, "but I suppose
it can't do any harm and it may help to make things pleasant all round. If
you're going to apologise I suppose I ought to do the same."

"Come on then," I said.

"Where to?"

"To apologise."

"Don't be absurd; we can't apologise now. We'll apologise to-morrow."

"We might miss her to-morrow, and we ought to do a thing like this without
delay and as early in the New Year as possible. If I don't do it now, I may
not feel apologetic later on, and I don't want to go through the year with
even a tittle of Miss Wortley's insomnia on my conscience."

Matilda seemed rather uncertain about it, but after a time recognised that
I was right, and we went up to Miss Wortley's room. I had to knock loudly
on her door before I got any answer, but eventually a sleepy voice said,
"Come in."

I didn't think that we had better do that, so I knocked again.

"All right, you can bring in the water."

"It isn't exactly your shaving water--in fact it's hardly time to get up
yet," I shouted.

"What's the matter? Is the place on fire?" I heard sounds as of a person
getting out of bed, so I said, "You needn't get up, it's only us. We wanted
to apologise about last night. We're sorry you didn't sleep very well. Of
course it wasn't altogether our fault, but still we thought that we should
like to apologise; in fact we didn't feel that we could go to sleep until
we had apologised; and--and we wanted to wish you a Happy New Year."

I am not sure that I did the thing very well, but I am sure that it would
have sounded better and that I shouldn't have ended so lamely if Matilda
hadn't been so tactless as to laugh in the middle. Somehow I got the idea
that the apology hadn't been accepted in the spirit in which it had been
tendered. Suspicious sounds came from within, including the click of a
water jug; also the German family opposite seemed to be under the
impression that it was time to get up--so we didn't wait to say Good-night,
but slipped quietly out of the way. Miss Wortley's door and the door
opposite opened simultaneously. There were two splashes like water thrown
from jugs, and I fancy that more than one person got wet. It isn't easy to
discover exactly what is happening when two people are shouting at the tops
of their voices in different languages, but I didn't gather that they quite
cleared the matter up to their m