I took the cigar up and put it to my ear.

“I can’t hear anything wrong,” I said.  “I expect what it really wants is massage.”

Charles filled his pipe again and got up.  “Let’s go for a stroll,” he said.  “It’s a beautiful night.  Bring your cigar with you.”

“It may prefer the open air,” I said.  “There’s always that.  You know we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the Portuguese climate is different from ours.  The thing’s pores may have acted more readily in the South.  On the other hand, the unfastened end may have been more adhesive.  I gather that though you have never actually met anybody who has smoked a cigar like this, yet you understand that the experiment is a practicable one.  As far as you know, this had no brothers.  No, no, Charles, I’m going on with it, but I should like to know all that you can tell me of its parentage.  It had a Portuguese father and an American mother, I should say, and there has been a good deal of trouble in the family.  One moment”—­and as we went outside I stopped and cracked it in the door.

It was an inspiration.  At the very next application of the match I found that I had established a connection with the lighted end.  Not a long and steady connection, but one that came in gusts.  After two gusts I decided that it was perhaps safer to blow from my end, and for a little while we had in this way as much smoke around us as the most fastidious cigar-smoker could want.  Then I accidentally dropped it; something in the middle of it shifted, I suppose—­and for the rest of my stay behind it only one end was at work.

“Well,” said Charles, when we were back in the smoking-room, and I was giving the cigar a short breather, “it’s not a bad one, is it?”

“I have enjoyed it,” I said truthfully, for I like trying to get the mastery over a thing that defies me.

“You’ll never guess what it cost,” he chuckled.

“Tell me,” I said.  “I daren’t guess.”

“Well, in English money it works out at exactly three farthings.”

I looked at him for a long time and then shook my head sadly.

“Charles, old friend,” I said, “you’ve been done.”

A COLD WORLD

Herbert is a man who knows all about railway tickets, and packing, and being in time for trains, and things like that.  But I fancy I have taught him a lesson at last.  He won’t talk quite so much about tickets in future.

I was just thinking about getting up when he came into my room.  He looked at me in horror.

“My dear fellow!” he said.  “And you haven’t even packed!  You’ll be late.  Here, get up, and I’ll pack for you while you dress.”

“Do,” I said briefly.

“First of all, what clothes are you going to travel in?”

There was no help for it.  I sat up in bed and directed operations.

“Right,” said Herbert.  “Now, what about your return ticket?  You mustn’t forget that.”