Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/139



, December 11.

My dear Montie,

I have let you rest a good long time without a letter (not that I've been taking a rest myself), and now I should think you are opening your eyes with astonishment at the picture on my paper of a hotel at beautiful, blowy Biarritz. Thereby hangs a tale of adventure and misadventure.

No doubt my fair employer believes me at this moment to be consorting with couriers in the servants hall (if there be one) of her hotel. But, as usual, I know a trick worth two of that; and having washed his hands of Brown for the time being, your friend Jack sits smoking his pipe and writing to you in what is known as the "monkey-house" of this hotel. As you don't know Biarritz, you'll think that in exchanging all the comforts of a servants' hall for a monkey-house I am not doing myself as well as I might. But there are monkey-houses and monkey-houses. This one is a delightful glass room built on to the front of the hotel, facing a garden and tennis courts, commanding a glorious view of the sea and also of every creature, human and inhuman, who goes by. One has tea in the monkey-house;