In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at two
o'clock and keeps up till seven. If the porter is at all faithful,
he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rouses
the wrong people. We treated the pounding of the porter on our door
with silent contempt. At the next door he had better luck. Pound,
pound. An angry voice, "What do you want?"
"Time to take the train, sir."
"Not going to take any train."
"Ain't your name Smith?"
"Yes."
"Well, Smith" -
"I left no order to be called." (Indistinct grumbling from Smith's
room.)
Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage. In a little
while he returns to Smith's door, evidently not satisfied in his
mind. Rap, rap, rap!
"Well, what now?"
"What's your initials? A. T.; clear out!"
And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumbling
something about a mistake. The idea of waking a man up in the middle
of the night to ask him his "initials" was ridiculous enough to
banish sleep for another hour.
