as little inconvenience
as might be imagined the lodger could plunge his hand into his
cupboard and pull out a pipe, a box of matches, a bottle of ink, a
bottle of something else, paper and pins, and, last but not least, his
beloved tin whistle of three holes, variously dignified a _fretiau_, a
_frestele_, or a _galoubet_, upon which he played ravishing tunes.

Oh, a wonderful box was Straws' little bedstead cupboard! As Phazma
said of it, it contained everything it should not, and nothing it
should contain. But that was why it was a poet's box. If it had held a
Harpagon's Interest Computer, instead of a well-thumbed Virgil, or
Oldcodger's Commercial Statistics for 184--, instead of an antique,
leather-covered Montaigne, Straws would have had no use for the
cupboard. It was at once his library--a scanty one, for the poet held
tenaciously to but a few books--his sideboard, his _secretaire_, his
music cabinet--giving lodgment in this last capacity to a single work,
"The Complete and Classical Preceptor for Galoubet, Containing Tunes,
Polkas and Military Pieces."

Suspended from the ceiling hung a wooden cage, confining a mocking
bird that had become acclimated to the death-dealing atmosphere of
tobacco smoke, alcoholic fumes and poetry. All these the songster had
endured and survived, nay, thriven upon, lifting up its voice in happy
cadence and blithely hopping about its prison, the door of which
Straws sometimes opened, permitting the feathered captive the dubious
freedom of the room. Pasted on the foot-board of the bed was an old
engraving of a wandering musician mountebank, playing a galoubet as an
accompaniment to a dancing dog and a cock on stilts, a never-wearying
picture for Straws, with his migratory, vagabond proclivities.

A bracket on the wall looked as though it might have been intended for
a piece of statuary, or a bit of porcelain or china decoration, but
had really been set there for his ink-pot, when he was mindful to work
in bed, although how the Muse could be induced to set foot in that old
nookery of a room could only be explained through the whims and
crotchets of that odd young person's character.

Yet come she would and did, although she got dust on her flowing
skirts when she swept across the threshold; dust on her snow-white
gown--if the writers are to be believed in regard to its hue!--when
she sat down in the only chair, and dust in her eyes when she flirted
her fan. Fortunate was it for Stra