“I’ll pass you a tenner under the table; please pay the bill and give me the change outside.”
“Certainly, sonny,” said Dick; “but may I ask the reason of all this mystery?”
“The fact is, I’ve no smaller change, and I owe Otto a bit,” was the answer.
“Oh!” said Dick sympathetically.
The tenner was duly passed under the table. The young man lit a cigarette and left the room, passing out into the “roaring Strand.” He waited for a quarter of an hour cooling his heels on the pavement, when he was rejoined by his friend.
“Your change, old chap,” said Dick sweetly, as he handed the youth five shillings.
“But, my dear fellow, that was a ten-pun note I gave you,” he said.
“I know,” replied Dick. “But, you see, I owed Otto a bit too.”
How the ingenuous youth explained matters to his father, I have never heard.
In 1871 I first made the acquaintance of E. J. Odell, the actor. He then seemed to be a man well advanced in middle age. He is still alive—one of the features and mysteries of the Strand. He is the last of the Bohemians—the survival of days (to quote Eccles) “as is gone most like forever.” He has contrived to make a lasting reputation as an actor. His impersonations were usually in burlesque or opera-bouffe. I can personally recall two of his Metropolitan engagements. One of these was in a burlesque at the Gaiety. But he failed there to justify the high expectations of the management. Even at rehearsal there were difficulties. Bob Soutar was stage-manager, and, being a bit of a martinet, he and Odell did not quite “hit it.”