“You’re looking very fit,” said my solicitor.  “No, not fat, fit.”

“You don’t think I’m looking thin?” I asked anxiously.  “People are warning me that I may be overdoing it rather.  They tell me that I must be seriously on my guard against brain strain.”

“I suppose they think you oughtn’t to strain it too suddenly,” said my solicitor.  Though he is now a solicitor he was once just an ordinary boy like the rest of us, and it was in those days that he acquired the habit of being rude to me, a habit he has never quite forgotten.

“What is an onyx?” I said, changing the conversation.

“Why?” asked my solicitor, with his usual business acumen.

“Well, I was practically certain that I had seen one in the Zoo, in the reptile house, but I have just learnt that it is my lucky month stone.  Naturally I want to get one.”

The coffee came and we settled down to commerce.

“I was just going to ask you,” said my solicitor—­“have you any money lying idle at the bank?  Because if so—­”

“Whatever else it is doing, it isn’t lying idle,” I protested.  “I was at the bank to-day, and there were men chivying it about with shovels all the time.”

“Well, how much have you got?”

“About fifty pounds.”

“It ought to be more than that.”

“That’s what I say, but you know what banks are.  Actual merit counts for nothing with them.”

“Well, what did you want to do with it?”

“Exactly.  That was why I rang you up.  I—­er—­” This was really my moment, but somehow I was not quite ready to seize it.  My vast commercial enterprise still lacked a few trifling details.  “Er—­I—­well, it’s like that.”

“I might get you a few ground rents.”

“Don’t.  I shouldn’t know where to put them.”

“But if you really have fifty pounds simply lying idle I wish you’d lend it to me for a bit.  I’m confoundedly hard up.”

("Generous to A fault, you have A ready sympathy with the distressed.”  Dash it, what could I do?)

“Is it quite etiquette for clients to lend solicitors money?” I asked.  “I thought it was always solicitors who had to lend it to clients.  If I must, I’d rather lend it to you—­I mean, I’d dislike it less—­as to the old friend of my childhood.”

“Yes, that’s how I wanted to pay it back.”

“Bother.  Then I’ll send you a cheque to-night,” I sighed.

And that’s where we are at the moment.  “People born in this month always keep their promises.”  The money has got to go to-night.  If I hadn’t been born in January I shouldn’t be sending it; I certainly shouldn’t have promised it; I shouldn’t even have known that I had it.  Sometimes I almost wish that I had been born in one of the decent months.  March, say.