Portents

I was awakened this morning by a strange gnawing sensation in my lower left foot. My first thought was that the end had come sooner than I had foreseen and I was being slowly consumed by my wicked progeny. I was fairly wrong. The source of the gnawing, I discovered, was a small rotund English man in a shiny black bowler (and little else!). This odd little man had the greater portion of my lower left foot firmly seated in his mouth and was patiently gnawing away at it as if it were no more than a cup of afternoon tea.

"Good Heavens!" I said, and the gnawing Englishman kindly slipped my lower left foot out of his mouth and dried it with his handkerchief in a most gentlemanly fashion.

"Yes, quite," he replied, then promptly disappeared leaving no sign at all of his former presence, other than the merest smell of wet hanky.

I knew at once that this was no coincidence. This was an omen. Whether ill or otherwise I couldn't guess. I shall have to contact the Samurai. He will know what to do.