It was past eleven when he returned, but even the spectacle of his wife laboriously darning her old dress failed to reduce his good-humour in the slightest degree.  In a frivolous mood he even took a feather from the dismembered hat on the table and stuck it in his hair.  He took the stump of a strong cigar from his lips and, exhaling a final cloud of smoke, tossed it into the fireplace.

“Uncle George dead,” he said, at last, shaking his head.  “Hadn’t pleasure acquaintance, but good man.  Good man.”

He shook his head again and gazed mistily at his wife.

“He was a teetotaller,” she remarked, casually.

“He was tee-toiler,” repeated Mr. Gribble, regarding her equably.  “Good man.  Uncle George dead-tee-toller.”

Mrs. Gribble gathered up her work and began to put it away.

“Bed-time,” said Mr. Gribble, and led the way upstairs, singing.

His good-humour had evaporated by the morning, and, having made a light breakfast of five cups of tea, he went off, with lagging steps, to work.  It was a beautiful spring morning, and the idea of a man with two hundred a year and a headache going off to a warehouse instead of a day’s outing seemed to border upon the absurd.  What use was money without freedom?  His toil was sweetened that day by the knowledge that he could drop it any time he liked and walk out, a free man, into the sunlight.

By the end of a week his mind was made up.  Each day that passed made his hurried uprising and scrambled breakfast more and more irksome; and on Monday morning, with hands in trouser-pockets and legs stretched out, he leaned back in his chair and received his wife’s alarming intimations as to the flight of time with a superior and sphinx-like smile.

“It’s too fine to go to work to-day,” he said, lazily.  “Come to that, any day is too fine to waste at work.”

Mrs. Gribble sat gasping at him.

“So on Saturday I gave ’em a week’s notice,” continued her husband, “and after Potts and Co. had listened while I told ’em what I thought of ’em, they said they’d do without the week’s notice.”

“You’ve never given up your job?” said Mrs. Gribble.

“I spoke to old Potts as one gentleman of independent means to another,” said Mr. Gribble, smiling.  “Thirty-five bob a week after twenty years’ service!  And he had the cheek to tell me I wasn’t worth that.  When I told him what he was worth he talked about sending for the police.  What are you looking like that for?  I’ve worked hard for you for thirty years, and I’ve had enough of it.  Now it’s your turn.”

“You’d find it hard to get another place at your age,” said his wife; “especially if they wouldn’t give you a good character.”

“Place!” said the other, staring.  “Place!  I tell you I’ve done with work.  For a man o’ my means to go on working for thirty-five bob a week is ridiculous.”

“But suppose anything happened to me,” said his wife, in a troubled voice.