I embroider the anecdotes that I should relate of him!"
I will tell you a little story.
On one of the most unfortunate nights of my life I reached a certain hotel, believing that I was to entertain to dinner a man who had just descended there. From this festivity I anticipated a great deal of pleasure. The invitation was five years old. For five years I had been hungering for this dinner, at which my dear old Derry and I were going to celebrate his return from the East. He was in this hotel. He had sent me a telegram to say that he was my man for the evening. All the way to the hotel I had cogitated worthy menus.
As I entered the lounge I perceived Derry, and precipitated myself across the intervening space. After we had greeted each other, I found that he was introducing me to Mr. Thoms, just home from the Straits, one of the best, etcetera, etcetera. Mr. Thoms had all the appearance of being that moment landed in England after a protracted sojourn in Asia; that is to say, his clothes were obviously those in which six or seven years earlier, a slim boy, he had fared forth into the mysterious East. And the East had fattened him. To-morrow he would be at his tailor's, and the day after to-morrow he would be undistinguish-
