“Who are you, now?  A gentleman?  Not quite, I guess.  Some squireen of the parts adjacent, and look in somewhat of a crapulocomatose state moreover.  I wonder if you are the great Trebooze of Trebooze.”

“I say,” yawned the young gentleman, “where’s old Heale?” and an oath followed the speech, as it did every other one herein recorded.

“The playing half of old Heale is in bed, and I’m his working half.  Can I do anything for you?”

“Cool fish,” thought the customer.  “I say—­what have you got there?”

“Australian honey-dew.  Did you ever smoke it?”

“I’ve heard of it; let’s see:”  and Mr. Trebooze—­for it was he—­put his hand across the counter unceremoniously, and clawed up some.

“Didn’t know you sold tobacco here.  Prime stuff.  Too strong for me, though, this morning, somehow.”

“Ah?  A little too much claret last night?  I thought so.  We’ll set that right in five minutes.”

“Eh?  How did you guess that?” asked Trebooze, with a larger oath than usual.

“Oh, we doctors are men of the world,” said Tom, in a cheerful and insinuating tone, as he mixed his man a draught.

“You doctors?  You’re a cock of a different hackle from old Heale, then.”

“I trust so,” said Tom.

“By George, I feel better already.  I say, you’re a trump; I suppose you’re Heale’s new partner, the man who was washed ashore!”

Tom nodded assent;

“I say—­How do you sell that honey-dew?”

“I don’t sell it; I’ll give you as much as you like, only you shan’t smoke it till after dinner.”

“Shan’t?” said Trebooze, testy and proud.

“Not with my leave, or you’ll be complaining two hours hence that I am a humbug, and have done you no good.  Get on your horse, and have four hours’ gallop on the downs, and you’ll feel like a buffalo bull by two o’clock.”

Trebooze looked at him with a stupid curiosity and a little awe.  He saw that Tom’s cool self-possession was not meant for impudence; and something in his tone and manner told him that the boast of being “a man of the world” was not untrue.  And of all kinds of men, a man of the world was the man of whom Trebooze stood most in awe.  A small squireen, cursed with six or seven hundreds a year of his own, never sent to school, college, or into the army, he had grown up in a narrow circle of squireens like himself, without an object save that of gratifying his animal passions; and had about six years before, being then just of age, settled in life by marrying his housemaid—­the only wise thing, perhaps, he ever did.  For she, a clever and determined woman, kept him, though not from drunkenness and debt, at least from delirium tremens and ruin, and was, in her rough, vulgar way, his guardian angel—­such a one at least, as he was worthy of.  More than once has one seen the same seeming folly turn out in practice as wise a step as could well have been taken; and the coarse nature of the man, which would have crushed and ill-used a delicate and high-minded wife, subdued to something like decency by a help literally meet for it.