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“Oh, I can never do it. Bob, you show us.”

Bob is an active young fellow. He took the poker, rested the end on the floor, and then twisted himself underneath his right arm. I expected to see him come up inside out, but he looked much the same after it. However, no doubt his organs are all on the wrong side now.

“Yes, that’s how I should do it,” I said hastily.

But Miss Power was firm. She gave me the poker. I pressed it hard on the floor, said good-bye to them all, and dived. I got half-way round, and was supporting myself upside down by one toe and the slippery end of the poker, when it suddenly occurred to me that the earth was revolving at an incredible speed on its own axis, and that, in addition, we were hurtling at thousands of miles a minute round the sun. It seemed impossible in these circumstances that I should keep my balance any longer; and as soon as I realized this, the poker began to slip. I was in no sort of position to do anything about it, and we came down heavily together.

“Oh, what a pity!” said Miss Power. “I quite thought you’d done it.”

“Being actually on the spot,” I said, “I knew that I hadn’t.”

“Do try again.”

“Not till the ground’s a little softer.”

“Let’s do the jam-pot trick,” said another girl.

“I’m not going under a jam-pot for anybody,” I murmured.

However, it turned out that this trick was quite different. You place a book (Macaulay’s Essays or what not) on the jam-pot and sit on the book, one heel only touching the ground. In the right hand you have a box of matches, in the left a candle. The jam-pot, of course, is on its side, so that it can roll beneath you. Then you light the candle … and hand it to anybody who wants to go to bed.

I was ready to give way to the ladies here, but even while I was bowing and saying, “Not at all,” I found myself on one of the jam-pots with Bob next to me on another. To balance with the arms outstretched was not so difficult; but as the matches were then about six feet from the candle and there seemed no way of getting them nearer together the solution of the problem was as remote as ever. Three times I brought my hands together, and three times the jam-pot left me.

“Well played, Bob,” said somebody. The bounder had done it.

I looked at his jam-pot.

“There you are,” I said, “‘Raspberry–1909.’ Mine’s ‘Gooseberry-1911,’ a rotten vintage. And look at my book, Alone on the Prairie; and you’ve got The Mormon’s Wedding. No wonder I couldn’t do it.”

I refused to try it again as I didn’t think I was being treated fairly; and after Bob and Miss Power had had a race at it, which Bob won, we got on to something else.

“Of course you can pick a pin out of a chair with your teeth?” said Miss Power.

“Not properly,” I said. “I always swallow the pin.”

“I suppose it doesn’t count if you swallow the pin,” said Miss Power thoughtfully.

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that side of it much. Anyhow, unless you’ve got a whole lot of pins you don’t want, don’t ask me to do it to-night.”

Accordingly we passed on to the water-trick. I refused at this, but Miss Power went full length on the floor with a glass of water balanced on her fore-head and came up again without spilling a single drop. Personally, I shouldn’t have minded spilling a single drop; it was the thought of spilling the whole glass that kept me back. Anyway, it is a useless trick, the need for which never arises in an ordinary career. Picking up The Times with the teeth, while clasping the left ankle with the right hand, is another matter. That might come in useful on occasions; as, for instance, if having lost your left arm on the field and having to staunch with the right hand the flow of blood from a bullet wound in the opposite ankle, you desired to glance through the Financial Supplement while waiting for the ambulance.