“All right,” said I. “Maybe Thompson will call here and you can walk up with him.”
“Thompson call? What the blue pencil do you mean?”
“Just what I say. If you had waited for five minutes last night you might have had his company up to that pleasant little séance in which you turned his head into a chair. He called to see the Glasgow Herald before you could have reached the end of the street.”
He gave a little gasp.
“I didn’t say Thompson, did I?” he asked, after a pause.
“You certainly did,” said I.
“I’ll be forgetting my own name next,” said he. “The man’s name is Johnston—he lives in the corner house of the row I lodge in.”
“Anyhow, you’ll not see him to-night,” said I.
The fellow failed to exasperate me even then. But he succeeded early the next month. He came to me one night with a magazine in his hand.