It is strange that when a thing happens once, it forthwith happens twice or even more.  For years no member of the “old gang” had come in touch with Mr. Sims.  Yet the visit of Tommy Vidal was followed at no great distance of time by the “blowing in” of Ned Purvis.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Sims, as he opened one afternoon a telegram that the deferential waiter brought upon a tray.  “This beats all!  Old Ned Purvis wires that he’s, going to blow in to town to-night at seven.”

Forthwith Mr. Sims fell to ordering dinner for the three of us in a private room, with enough of an assortment of gin cocktails and Scotch highballs to run a distillery, and enough Vichy water and imported soda for a bath.  “I know old Ned!” he said as he added item after item to the list.

At seven o’clock the waiter whispered, as in deep confidence, that there was a gentleman below for Mr. Sims.

It so happened that on that evening my friend’s foot was in bad shape, and rested on a chair.  At his request I went from the lounge room of the club downstairs to welcome the new arrival.

Purvis I knew all about.  My friend had spoken of him a thousand times.  He had played half-back on the football team—­a big hulking brute of a fellow.  In fact, he was, as pictured by Mr. Sims, a perfect colossus.  And he played football—­as did all Mr. Sims’s college chums—­“plastered.”  “Old Ned,” so Mr. Sims would relate, “was pretty well ‘soused’ when the game started:  but we put a hose at him at half-time and got him into pretty good shape.”  All men in any keen athletic contest, as remembered by Mr. Sims, were pretty well “tanked up.”  For the lighter, nimbler games such as tennis, they were reported “spifflocated” and in that shape performed prodigies of agility.

“You’ll know Ned,” said Mr. Sims, “by his big shoulders.”  I went downstairs.

The reception room below was empty, except for one man, a little, gentle-looking man with spectacles.  He wore black clothes with a waistcoat reaching to the throat, a white tie and a collar buttoned on backwards.  Ned Purvis was a clergyman!  His great hulking shoulders had gone the way of all my good friend’s reminiscences.

I brought him upstairs.

For a moment, in the half light of the room, Mr. Sims was still deceived.

“Well, Ned!” he began heartily, with a struggle to rise from his chair—­then he saw the collar and tie of the Rev. Mr. Purvis, and the full horror of the thing dawned upon him.  Nor did the three gin cocktails, which Mr. Sims had had stationed ready for the reunion, greatly help its geniality.  Yet it had been a maxim, in the recollections of Mr. Sims, that when any of the boys blew in anywhere the bringing of drinks must be instantaneous and uproarious.

Our dinner that night was very quiet.

Mr. Purvis drank only water.  That, with a little salad, made his meal.  He had a meeting to address that evening at eight, a meeting of women—­“dear women” he called them—­who had recently affiliated their society with the work that some of the dear women in Mr. Purvis’s own town were carrying on.  The work, as described, boded no good for breweries.  Mr. Purvis’s wife, so it seemed, was with him and would also “take the platform.”