‘Ah! clock wrong now!’

He leaned back like a man who can no longer carry his burdens, informing Jonathan, on his coming up to place the roll of bread and firm butter, that he was forty seconds too fast, as if it were a capital offence, and he deserved to step into Eternity for outstripping Time.

‘But, I daresay, you don’t understand the importance of a minute,’ said the old gentleman, bitterly.  ’Not you, or any of you.  Better if we had run a little ahead of your minute, perhaps—­and the rest of you!  Do you think you can cancel the mischief that’s done in the world in that minute, sir, by hurrying ahead like that?  Tell me!’

Rather at a loss, Jonathan scanned the clock seriously, and observed that it was not quite a minute too fast.

The old gentleman pulled out his watch.  He grunted that a lying clock was hateful to him; subsequently sinking into contemplation of his thumbs,—­a sign known to Jonathan as indicative of the old gentleman’s system having resolved, in spite of external outrages, to be fortified with calm to meet the repast.

It is not fair to go behind an eccentric; but the fact was, this old gentleman was slightly ashamed of his month’s vagrancy and cruel conduct, and cloaked his behaviour toward the Aurora, in all the charges he could muster against it.  He was very human, albeit an odd form of the race.

Happily for his digestion of Thursday, the cook, warned by Jonathan, kept the old gentleman’s time, not the Aurora’s:  and the dinner was correct; the dinner was eaten in peace; he began to address his plate vigorously, poured out his Madeira, and chuckled, as the familiar ideas engendered by good wine were revived in him.  Jonathan reported at the bar that the old gentleman was all right again.

One would like here to pause, while our worthy ancient feeds, and indulge in a short essay on Habit, to show what a sacred and admirable thing it is that makes flimsy Time substantial, and consolidates his triple life.  It is proof that we have come to the end of dreams and Time’s delusions, and are determined to sit down at Life’s feast and carve for ourselves.  Its day is the child of yesterday, and has a claim on to-morrow.  Whereas those who have no such plan of existence and sum of their wisdom to show, the winds blow them as they list.  Consider, then, mercifully the wrath of him on whom carelessness or forgetfulness has brought a snap in the links of Habit.  You incline to scorn him because, his slippers misplaced, or asparagus not on his table the first day of a particular Spring month, he gazes blankly and sighs as one who saw the End.  To you it may appear small.  You call to him to be a man.  He is:  but he is also an immortal, and his confidence in unceasing orderly progression is rudely dashed.

But the old gentleman has finished his dinner and his Madeira, and says:  ’Now, Jonathan, “thock” the Port!’—­his joke when matters have gone well:  meant to express the sound of the uncorking, probably.  The habit of making good jokes is rare, as you know:  old gentlemen have not yet attained to it:  nevertheless Jonathan enjoys this one, which has seen a generation in and out, for he knows its purport to be, ’My heart is open.’