"'HE HAD THE JOLLIEST LITTLE DINNER READY YOU EVER SAW.'"
"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 installments 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?"
"He'll never be the man that Perkins expects; but he's doing his level best, and—is rising in the office. Perkins swears by him, and that's made a man of the fellow.
"He's paid up the cash now, but—he can never pay up the kindness—confound those wax matches, they never strike—he told his mother last summer the whole story.