“No prophet, as far as I’ve heard I tell of that profession,” proceeded Joey, “ever lived principally underground.  No prophet, whatever else he might take in at the pores, ever took in wine from morning to night, for a number of years together.  When I said to young Master Wilding, respecting his changing the name of the firm, that one of these days he might find he’d changed the luck of the firm—­did I put myself forward as a prophet?  No, I didn’t.  Has what I said to him come true?  Yes, it has.  In the time of Pebbleson Nephew, Young Mr. Vendale, no such thing was ever known as a mistake made in a consignment delivered at these doors.  There’s a mistake been made now.  Please to remark that it happened before Miss Margaret came here.  For which reason it don’t go against what I’ve said respecting Miss Margaret singing round the luck.  Read that, sir,” concluded Joey, pointing attention to a special passage in the report, with a forefinger which appeared to be in process of taking in through the pores nothing more remarkable than dirt.  “It’s foreign to my nature to crow over the house I serve, but I feel it a kind of solemn duty to ask you to read that.”

Vendale read as follows:—­“Note, respecting the Swiss champagne.  An irregularity has been discovered in the last consignment received from the firm of Defresnier and Co.”  Vendale stopped, and referred to a memorandum-book by his side.  “That was in Mr. Wilding’s time,” he said.  “The vintage was a particularly good one, and he took the whole of it.  The Swiss champagne has done very well, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t say it’s done badly,” answered the Cellarman.  “It may have got sick in our customers’ bins, or it may have bust in our customers’ hands.  But I don’t say it’s done badly with us.”

Vendale resumed the reading of the note:  “We find the number of the cases to be quite correct by the books.  But six of them, which present a slight difference from the rest in the brand, have been opened, and have been found to contain a red wine instead of champagne.  The similarity in the brands, we suppose, caused a mistake to be made in sending the consignment from Neuchatel.  The error has not been found to extend beyond six cases.”

“Is that all!” exclaimed Vendale, tossing the note away from him.

Joey Ladle’s eye followed the flying morsel of paper drearily.

“I’m glad to see you take it easy, sir,” he said.  “Whatever happens, it will be always a comfort to you to remember that you took it easy at first.  Sometimes one mistake leads to another.  A man drops a bit of orange-peel on the pavement by mistake, and another man treads on it by mistake, and there’s a job at the hospital, and a party crippled for life.  I’m glad you take it easy, sir.  In Pebbleson Nephew’s time we shouldn’t have taken it easy till we had seen the end of it.  Without desiring to crow over the house, young Mr. Vendale, I wish you well through it.  No offence, sir,” said the Cellarman, opening the door to go out, and looking in again ominously before he shut it.  “I’m muddled and molloncolly, I grant you.  But I’m an old servant of Pebbleson Nephew, and I wish you well through them six cases of red wine.”