“He added a few well-chosen sentences about sturm und drang or something; and in about five minutes I found myself getting a complete slanging for my narrow-minded prejudices, and for my attempt to curtail the innocent recreation of others. I will say this for our friend, however: he never for a moment allowed our little difference on what was after all a purely academic question, to interfere with his display of hospitality to myself and Herr Vanderbosch. He filled our tumblers, and was lavish with the tobacco jar. When I rose to go to bed he called me aside, and said he had made arrangements for me to sleep in the truckle for the night, in order to admit of his occupying my bed with Herr Vanderbosch—the poor devil, he explained to me with many deprecating nods, had not, he feared, any place to sleep that night. But at this point I turned. I assured him that I was constitutionally unfitted for sleeping in a truckle, or, in fact, in any bed but my own.
“‘All right,’ he cried in a huff, ‘I’ll sleep in the truckle, and I’ll make up a good fire for him to sleep before on the sofa.’
“Well, we all breakfasted together, and the next night the two gentlemen appeared once more at the door of the house. They were walking in as usual, when the landlady asked them where they were going.
“‘Why, upstairs, to be sure,’ said our friend. “‘Oh no!’ said the landlady, ‘you’re not doing that. Mr. Plantagenet has left his rooms and gone to the country for a month—maybe two—and the rooms is let to another gent.’ “Well, our friend swore that he had been treated infernally, and Herr Vanderbosch alluded to me as a schweinhund—I heard him. I fancy the word must be a term of considerable opprobrium in the German tongue. Anyhow, they didn’t get past the landlady,—she takes a large size in doors,—and after a while our friend’s menaces dwindled down to a request to be permitted to remove his luggage.
“‘I’ll bring it down to you,’ said the landlady; and she shut the hall door very gently, leaving them on the step outside. When she brought down the luggage—it consisted of three paper collars and one cuff with a fine carbuncle stud in it—they were gone.
“Our friend told some one the other day of the disgraceful way I had treated him and his foreign associate. But he says he would not have minded so much if the landlady had not shut the door so gently.”
Another remarkable pressman with whom I came in contact several years ago was a member of the reporting staff of an Irish newspaper. One day I noticed him wearing what appeared to me to be an extremely fine ring. It was set with an antique polished intaglio surrounded by diamonds. The ring was probably unique, and would be worth perhaps £70 to a collector. I have seen very inferior mediaeval intaglios sold for that sum. I examined the diamonds with a lens, and then inquired of the youth where he had bought it, and if he was anything of a collector.
“I picked it up going home one wet night,” he replied. “I advertised for the owner in all the papers for a week—it cost me thirty shillings in that way,—but no one ever came forward to claim it. I would gladly have sold the thing for thirty shillings at the end of a month; but then I found that it was worth close upon a hundred pounds.”
“You’re the luckiest chap I ever met,” said I.