“Yes,” said the Prophet, emphatically.  “You should be in bed, thoroughly in bed, by a quarter to eleven.  And Gustavus too!  He is young, and the young can’t be too careful.  Begin to-night, Mr. Ferdinand.  I speak for your health’s sake, believe me.”

So saying the Prophet hurried away, leaving Mr. Ferdinand almost as firmly rooted to the Turkey carpet with surprise as if he had been woven into the pattern at birth, and never unpicked in later years.

At ten that evening the Prophet, having escaped early from his dinner on some extravagant plea of sudden illness or second gaiety, stood in the small and sober passage of the celebrated Tintack Club and inquired anxiously for Mr. Robert Green.

“Yes, sir.  Mr. Green is upstairs in the smoke-room,” said the functionary whom the club grew under glass for the benefit of the members and their friends.

“Sam, show this gentleman to Mr. Green.”

Sam, who was a red-faced child in buttons, with a man’s walk and the back of one who knew as much as most people, obeyed this command, and ushered the Prophet into a room with a sealing-wax red paper, in which Robert Green was sitting alone, smoking a large cigar and glancing at the “stony-broke edition” of an evening paper.  He greeted the Prophet with his usual unaffected cordiality, offered him every drink that had yet been invented, and, on his refusal of them all, handed him a cigar and a matchbox, and whistled “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-av” at him in the most friendly manner possible.

“Bob,” said the Prophet, taking a very long time to light the cigar, “what, in your opinion, is the exact meaning of the term honour?”

Mr. Green’s cheerful, though slightly belated, face assumed an expression of genial betwaddlement.

“Oh, well, Hen,” he said, “exact meaning you know’s not so easy.  But—­hang it, we all understand the thing, eh, without sticking it down in words.  What?”

“I don’t, Bob,” rejoined the Prophet, in the tone of a man at odds with several consciences.  “In what direction does honour lie?”

“It don’t lie at all, old chap,” said Mr. Green, with the decided manner which had made him so universally esteemed in yeomanry circles.

The Prophet began to look very much distressed.

“Look here, Bob, I’ll put it in this way,” he said.  “Would an honourable man feel bound to keep a promise?”

“Rather.”

“Yes, but would he feel bound to keep two promises?”

“Rather, if he’d made ’em.”

“Suppose he had!”

“Go ahead, Hen, I’m supposing,” said Mr. Green, beginning to pucker his brows and stare very hard indeed in the endeavour to keep the supposition fixed firmly in his head.

“And, further, suppose that these two promises were diametrically opposed to one another.”

Mr. Green stuck out one leg, looked obliquely at the carpet, pressed his lips together and nodded.