“He would have done so if he could, with all his heart,” said the major.  “I don’t suppose he liked being thrashed any better than I should.”

“Nobody gives me a black eye,” said Mr Optimist.

“Nobody has as yet,” said the major.

“I hope they never will,” said Mr Butterwell.  Then, the hour for their meeting having come round, Mr Crosbie came into the Board-room.

“We have been very sorry to hear of this misfortune,” said Mr Optimist, very gravely.

“Not half so sorry as I have been,” said Crosbie, with a laugh.  “It’s an uncommon nuisance to have a black eye, and to go about looking like a prize-fighter.”

“And like a prize-fighter that didn’t win his battle, too,” said Fiasco.

“I don’t know that there’s much difference as to that,” said Crosbie.  “But the whole thing is a nuisance, and, if you please, we won’t say anything more about it.”

Mr Optimist almost entertained an opinion that it was his duty to say something more about it.  Was not he the chief Commissioner, and was not Mr Crosbie secretary to the Board?  Ought he, looking at their respective positions, to pass over without a word of notice such a manifest impropriety as this?  Would not Sir Raffle Buffle have said something had Mr Butterwell, when secretary, come to the office with a black eye?  He wished to exercise all the full rights of a chairman; but, nevertheless, as he looked at the secretary he felt embarrassed, and was unable to find the proper words.  “H-m, ha, well; we’ll go to business now, if you please,” he said, as though reserving to himself the right of returning to the secretary’s black eye when the more usual business of the Board should be completed.  But when the more usual business of the Board had been completed, the secretary left the room without any further reference to his eye.

Crosbie, when he got back to his own apartment, found Mortimer Gazebee waiting there for him.

“My dear fellow,” said Gazebee, “this is a very nasty affair.”

“Uncommonly nasty,” said Crosbie; “so nasty that I don’t mean to talk about it to anybody.”

“Lady Amelia is quite unhappy.”  He always called her Lady Amelia, even when speaking of her to his own brothers and sisters.  He was too well behaved to take the liberty of calling an earl’s daughter by her plain Christian name even though that earl’s daughter was his own wife.  “She fears that you have been a good deal hurt.”

“Not at all hurt; but disfigured, as you see.”

“And so you beat the fellow well that did it?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Crosbie very angrily.  “I didn’t beat him at all.  You don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, do you?”

“No, I don’t believe everything.  Of course I didn’t believe about his having aspired to an alliance with Lady Alexandrina.  That was untrue, of course.”  Mr Gazebee showed by the tone of his voice that imprudence so unparalleled as that was quite incredible.