"Most assuredly. Have something to warm you up for the ride."
The other Guards did not like "Q's" running off when he felt flush—"Mengy," in particular; but "Mengy" ought to be very grateful to "Q." When "Mengy" got permission to lecture on mummies at the museum and sent out learned circulars about his accomplishments as an Egyptologist, who was it, "Mengy," that made up your audience at your first lecture? None other than poor, old, wayward "Q." If he hadn't exercised compassion, you would have had no hearers at all.
He paid, too, "Mengy."
In a way, "Mengy" was a whining man. One day, there had been too much tavern and too little museum, and "Mengy" was under the weather. I shall never forget the picture he made, as he lounged back in his chair after the last drink. His two soiled long coats enveloped his slender form like blankets around a lamp-post, and there was a forlorn, half-academic, half-nauseated look in his pale face that can often be seen at sea. His disgruntledness made him melancholy. Standing up during a pause in the conversation, he gathered the skirts of his coats about him, readjusted his shabby hat, and sobbed, as if his heart had been torn out of him, "Nobody likes 'Mengy'—Nobody!" Then, with tears tracing the grimaces in his face, he made for the museum to clean up his desk, and go home to his corpulent wife. She was the bread-winner in "Mengy's" outfit.
There is a story to the effect that "Q" at one time contemplated marriage and some one to look out for him. They say that he spruced up, and finally located a young lady of means. She was not unfriendly to his advances, and it looked like a match. But "Q" could not keep away from the comfortable quarters in the museum and the conferences at the "Tavern." The fair maid found this out, and went away to Edinburgh to think things over. One day, "Q" was in sore need of ten shillings. He could think of no one who would be so glad to let him have it as the fair one. He squandered sixpence on a telegram describing his distress. "If women but knew!" I have heard women sigh. Well, "Q's" girl knew. She wrote back by post: "Dear Q.—A shilling you will probably need for the evening; please find same enclosed. Yours, Janet." "Q" tells this story on himself to explain his continued singleness of purpose.
The Guards could not be referred to here without reference to "Bosky," although I never knew him as well as I did "Q" and "Mengy." "Bosky" probably had the greatest reputation of all as a learned man and writer. His writings on ancient men and things appear in our magazines at times. He once got me very much interested in what he knew about the art of burglary in Pharaoh's time, and I have often wondered why he did not write the article he had in mind. But, with all his knowledge of dead nations and languages, "Bosky" enjoyed his "Tavern" sittings quite as much as did "Q" and "Mengy." The last time I saw him I asked him to write me something in Chaldaic. He handed me some hieroglyphics on an envelope. "Meaning?" I said. "Bosky" smiled benevolently, and said: "I want a long drink from the Far West."
He then told me how a sixpence had disturbed his sleep the night before. He had got home late, he said, after a "Tavern" sitting, but he was sure on going to bed that he had managed to save the sixpence for his morning meal.
"My wife's right artful," he explained, "so I tucked the coin under the rug. I had a dream that I'd forgotten where I had hidden it, and from three o'clock on I couldn't sleep. I knew where it was afterwards all right, but I was afraid my wife might dream that she knew, too. Married life has its troubles, I can tell you."