So ended my famous supper-party, after which, for a season, I prudently retired into private life.
Chapter Eighteen.
How my Friend Smith came back, and told me a Great Secret.
My grand evening party was over, but I had still my accounts for that entertainment to square. And the result of that operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn’t exactly say how, in sundry “trifling expenditures,” such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all of which it had seemed no harm to indulge in, especially as they were very cheap, under my altered circumstances.
On the strength of my new riches also I was already six shillings in debt to the Oxford-shirt man, and four shillings in debt to the Twins, who had paid my share in the boating expedition up the river. And now, when I came to reckon up my liabilities for the supper, I found I owed as much as eight shillings to the pastrycook and five shillings to the grocer, besides having already paid two shillings for the unlucky lobster (which to my horror and shame I found out after every one had left had not been fresh), one shilling for eggs, sixpence for shrimps, and one-and-sixpence for the hire of the cups and saucers.
The ingenious reader will be able to arrive at a true estimate of my financial position from these figures, and will see that so far, at any rate, my increase of riches had not made me a wealthier man than when I had lived within my income on eight shillings a week.
Nor had it made me either better or happier I made a few more good resolutions after the party to be a fool no longer. I could see plainly enough that all my so-called friends had been amusing themselves at my expense, and were certainly not worth my running myself head over ears in debt to retain. I could see too, when I came to reflect, that all my efforts to pass myself off as “one of them” had ended pitifully for me, if not ridiculously. Yes, it was time I gave it up. Alas! for the vanity of youth! The very day that witnessed the forming of my resolutions witnessed also the breaking of them.
“Hullo, young ’un!” cried Doubleday, as I put in my appearance at the office; “here you are! How are you after it all?”