An Icicle

My room at the hotel was as dreary as a stubble-field upon a November
evening. The whole house was new, varnished, and hard. My bedroom was
small. A piece of new ingrain carpet covered part of the hard
varnished floor. Four hard walls and a ceiling, deadly white,
surrounded me. The hard varnished bedstead (the mattress felt as if it
were varnished) nearly filled the little room. Two stiff chairs, and a
yellow window-shade which looked as if it were made of varnished wood,
glittered in the feeble light of a glass lamp, while the ghastly
grayish pallor of the ewer and basin on the wash-stand was thrown into
bold relief by the intenser whiteness of the wall behind it.

I put out my light as soon as possible and resolutely closed my eyes,
for a street lamp opposite my window would not allow the room to fade
into obscurity, and, as long as the hardness of the bed prevented me
from sleeping, my thoughts ran back to the chamber of the favored
guest, but my conscience stood by me. Cathay is a country where it is
necessary to be very careful.

I did not leave Waterton until after nine o'clock the next day, for,
although I was early at the shop to which my bicycle had been sent, it
was not quite ready for me, and I had to wait. Fortunately no
Willoughby came that way.

But when at last I mounted my wheel I sped away rapidly towards the
north. I had ordered my baggage expressed to a town fifty miles away,
and I hoped that if I rode steadily and kept my eyes straight in front
of me I might safely get out of Cathay, for the boundaries of that
fateful territory could not extend themselves indefinitely.