The man looked, and sank sobbing to the floor.
"Heaven help me!" he moaned. "I have a sick grandfather, S'rennery," he added. "I was up with him all night."
The great man immediately became all tenderness. Throwing the poker to one side, he sprang to where his unfortunate property-man lay, and raised him up.
"Why the devil didn't you say so?" he said, sympathetically. "I didn't know it, Henderson, my dear old boy. Never mind the poker. Let it go. I forgive you that. Here, take this £20 note, and don't come back until your grandfather is well again."
It was a beautiful scene, and so pathetic that I almost wept. The property-man rose to his feet, and putting the £20 note in his pocket, walked dejectedly away.
Sir Henry turned to me, and said, his voice husky with emotion: "Pardon me, Miss Witherup! I was provoked."
"It was a magnificent scene, Sir Henry," said I. "But what was the matter with the poker? I thought it rather a good one."
"It is," said he, sitting down on a small chair and twiddling his thumbs. "But, you see, this is an Empire scene, and that confounded thing is a Marie Antoinette poker. Why, if that had happened at a public performance, I should have been ruined."
"Might not Bonaparte have used a Marie Antoinette poker?" I asked, to draw him out.
"Bonaparte, Miss Witherup," he answered, "might have done anything but that. You see, by the time he became Emperor every bit of household stuff in the palace had been stolen by the French mobs. Therefore it is fair to assume that the palace was entirely refurnished when Bonaparte came in, and as at that time there was no craze for Louis Quinze, or Louis Seize, or Louis number this, that, and the other, it is not at all probable that Napoleon would have taken the trouble to snoop around the second-hand shops for a poker of that kind. Indeed, it is more than probable that everything he had in the palace was absolutely new."