"I've come," he said, "to apologise, sir, very humbly for the way I spoke yesterday. As you saw, I wasn't myself, sir."
"Then you were drunk?" said Mr Begg with mild interest.
"Oh, no, sir. At least it was more drugged. I'd suffered torments all day with toothache, and took a little laudanum for it, and that made me come over all anyhow. If I'd been myself I'd sooner have cut off my right hand—"
"That'll do," said Mr Begg. "No more need be said about it in that case. But when you are troubled with toothache again I should advise you either to take a little less laudanum or to take a good deal more. Now get on with your work."
Thus tact triumphed.
Mrs Smithers kept her word, and Mrs Warboys and the relict of the late Charles Push have missed a story which would undoubtedly have amused them. Smithers has returned to his natural rôle. The newspaper cuttings have been replaced by a chromo which happened to fit the frame exactly, and the happiness is general.
SOME NOTES ON CYRUS VERD
The name of Cyrus Verd, once so frequently seen in the newspapers and heard in conversation, has now for many years past been rarely mentioned. The absolute retirement of the latter part of his life helped the public—always ready to forget—to forget him. A few weeks ago at the club I happened to say something or other about him, and a man who, as a rule, knows his world turned to me and asked who Cyrus Verd was. The obituary notice of him in the Times the other day may possibly have revived interest in what was really rather an extraordinary personality. But the notice was brief, and beyond names and dates said little more than that he was "an eccentric millionaire, who, at the age of forty-five, chose to surrender almost the whole of his wealth and live a life of comparative poverty. It is said that this step was the result of some curious religious convictions, but Cyrus Verd himself never in his lifetime offered any explanation of it."