2c6 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



nodded to Buller, smiled on Fobbes through the glass door, 

 and winked at Grumbury when he came out to know whose 

 eye it was : and on my tenth day in the bank I went wrong 

 to the extent of thirty-thousand pounds in my account. I 

 forget now how it was that I had to enter it, or what took 

 me into the cashier's department : probably Birch's punch 

 did it. At all events the cashier's clerks, with Fobbes and 

 Grumbury into the bargain, were all kept at the bank long 

 after office hours, utterly unable to make out where the 

 money was lost, and I have a sort of notion that in conse- 

 quence of this little error of mine, something " went up " 

 that ought to have gone down, and something " went down," 

 that ought to have gone up, and the Stock Exchange was, 

 somehow, visibly affected. 



I w^as cautioned, and went on for more than a week at 

 this sort of drudgery (for drudgery it was to a B.A.), when 

 my cousin at Lloyd's suddenly discovered a wonderful 

 beverage concocted by the head waiter of the Marine Insur- 

 ance establishment. There was plenty of ice in • it, I know 

 that, and you sucked it through a straw, like sherry cobler : 

 it wasn't sherry cobler, and it wasn't any other cobbler ; but 

 it was one of those drinks that you go on sipping and 

 wondering what it is, and how it's made, and whether half-a- 

 glass more would hurt you, and finally decide that there isn't 

 a headache in half a hogshead of it. I did all this, without 

 arriving at the half hogshead point, and the half-glass more 

 did hurt me. I have been since informed that I offered to 

 fight one of the customers, who, I pointed out, had insulted 

 me, across the counter, and whose proffered cheque I scorned. 



