"I felt constrained," replied The Freak, as one old gentleman to another, "to return to the House upon an errand of reparation."
A full half of the company present were blankly ignorant as to the meaning of the word "reparation," so they giggled contentedly and decided that The Freak was in good form this morning.
"What was the trouble?" asked Jerningham.
"As I was counting my change in the cab," explained The Freak, "I found that I was a penny short. (I'll have fried sole, and then bacon-and-eggs, please. And chocolate.)"
"Shylock!" commented the humorous Mr. Jerningham.
The Freak hastened to explain.
"It was the only penny I had," he said: "that was why I missed it. The rest was silver. I saw what had happened: I had given a penny to Seagrave by mistake, instead of half-a-crown."
The thought of Mr. Seagrave, the stern and awful butler of the Hivite House, incredulously contemplating a solitary copper in his palm, what time the unconscious Freak drove away two-and-fivepence to the good, tickled the company greatly, and the narrator had made considerable inroads upon the fried sole before he was called upon to continue.
"What did you do?" asked Rumbold.
"I drove back and apologised, and gave him two-and-fivepence," said The Freak simply.