“He had just been calling on me.”
“Then I wish you'd entreat him not to go downstairs like a six-inch shell. I'll have a bruise to-morrow where the crown of his hat caught me as big as a soup-plate.”
I offered the cheerily indignant warrior apologies for my friend's parabolic method of descent, and suggested Elliman's Embrocation.
“The most extraordinary part of it,” he interrupted, “was that when I picked him up he was weeping like anything. What was he crying about?”
“He is a sensitive creature,” said I, “and he doesn't come upon the pit of the stomach of a Colonel of British Cavalry every day in the week.”
He sniffed uncertainly at the remark for a second or two and then broke into a laugh and asked me to play bridge after dinner. On the two preceding evenings he and I had attempted to cheer, in this manner, the desolation of a couple of the elderly maiden ladies. But I may say, parenthetically, that as he played bridge as if he were leading a cavalry charge according to a text-book on tactics, and as I play card games in a soft, mental twilight, and as the two ladies were very keen bridge players indeed, I had great doubts as to the success of our attempts.
“I'm sorry,” said I, “but I'm going down into the town to-night.”
“Theatre? If so, I'll go with you.”
The gallant gentleman was always at a loose end. Unless he could persuade another human being to do something with him—no matter what—he would joyfully have played cat's cradle with me by the hour—he sat in awful boredom meditating on his liver.
“I'm not going to the theatre,” I said, “and I wish I could ask you to accompany me on my adventure.”