“Well?” prompted Mr. Dobb.
“That’s all,” stated Mr. Tridge, simply.
“Did ’e ’it you back?”
“Not ’alf, ’e didn’t!”
“And what did you do?”
“Went ’ome in a cab,” succinctly supplied Mr. Tridge.
Again silence prevailed in Mr. Dobb’s snug back parlour. Mr. Tridge, sitting respectfully upright in his seat, once more fixed a forlorn and rather anxious gaze on his host. The late cook to the “Jane Gladys,” untroubled by his old shipmate’s appealing visage, settled down more comfortably in his arm-chair and puffed in cosy rumination at the stump of a cigar. A clock, acquired by Mr. Dobb in the course of business, stood on the mantelshelf. From the facts that it had just struck eleven and that its dial registered a quarter to two, anyone thoroughly familiar with its idiosyncrasies would have deduced that the correct hour of the evening was something between six and seven.
Mr. Dobb, presently producing a penknife, impaled his cigar-stump on the point of its blade and thus pursued his smoke to its exceedingly bitter end. Still he forbore from speech, and at last Mr. Tridge, with a deep sigh of regret, rose to his feet.
“Well, I may as well be going now,” he asserted, mournfully. “Good-night, ’Orace.”
He crossed to the door, and there he halted.