“If it were only himself, why, he might take his licking and go to the Colonies; but it was hard... on his mother—it's always going out, this pipe—when he was her only son, and she rather... believed in him.
“Didn't sleep much that night—told me himself afterwards—and he concluded that the best way out was to buy opium in the City next day, and take it—pretty stiff dose, you know—next night.
“Cowardly rather, of course, but it might be easier for the mater down in Devon—his mother, I mean—did I say he was Devon?—same county as myself—affair would be hushed up, and she would have... his memory clean.
“As it happened, though, he didn't buy any opium next day—didn't get the chance; for Perkins came round to his desk, and asked this young chap to have a bit of dinner with him—aye, and made him come.
“He had the jolliest little dinner ready you ever saw, and he insisted on the fellow smoking, though Perkins hates the very smell of 'baccy, and—well, he got the whole trouble out of him, except the opium.
“D'y think he lectured and scolded? Not a bit—that's not Perkins—he left the fool to do his own lecturing, and he did it stiff. I'll tell you what he said: 'Your health must have been much tried by this anxiety, so you must go down and spend Christmas with your mother, and I would venture to suggest that you take her a suitable gift.
“With regard to your debt, you will allow me,' and Perkins spoke as if he had been explaining a schedule, 'to take it over, on two conditions—that you repay me by instalments every quarter, and dine with me every Saturday evening for six months.
“See what he was after? Wanted to keep... the fellow straight, and cheer him up; and you've no idea how Perkins came out those Saturdays—capital stories as ever you heard—and he declared that it was a pleasure to him.
“'I am rather lonely,' he used to say, 'and it is most kind of a young man to sit with me.' Kind!”
“What was the upshot with your friend? Did he turn over a new leaf?”