and I have
"scratched" thirty.

"A hundred's the game," says the Englishman, putting up his cue. "One
shilling."

I wonder if this is an English custom--to pay your victor a shilling,
instead of paying the keeper of the tables. But as there is no one
else to pay, I pay the Englishman. Bunker has fallen asleep in his
chair.

"Going on the Continent?" the Englishman asks.

"Not at present. We return to London first, and go from there."

"'Ave you got a guide?"

I am on the point of saying that guides are a nuisance I do not
tolerate, when the Englishman hands me a bit of paste-board. "There is
my card, sir," he says. "A. SHARPE, Interpreter and Courier." On the
opposite side I read--

SPEAKS SPRICHT PARLE PARLA
French, Franzoesich, Frangais, Francese,
German, Deutsch, Allemand, Tedesco,
Italian and Italienisch u. Italien et Italiano ed
English Englisch Anglais Inglese
fluently sehr gelaeufig. courrament. correntemente.

At present he has charge of this billiard-room, but he is ready to
follow me to the ends of the earth for a period of not less than three
months. I tell him I can get on without a guide.

"But I would go on the most reasonable terms. I would go for as low as
ten pounds a month and my expenses."

"Would you go for nothing?" Bunker wakes up and pops this out at him
so suddenly as to quite take his breath away.

He expands his hands at his trousers pockets, shrugs his shoulders and
looks volumes of reproach.

"Because," Bunker adds, in a soothing tone, "I shouldn't like to have
you along, even at that price."

He immediately goes to putting the room to rights.

"Horrible breath that man had," says Bunker when we come out: "did you
notice it?"

"Yes."

"Take that breath around with us on the Continent! Why, if he was in
Cologne itself, his breath would be in the majority."

I had my umbrella in the billiard-room, and next morning I can't find
it anywhere. At breakfast I ask the pompous head-waiter if he knows of
my umbrella. He states that he does not. After breakfast I look in the
billiard-room. It is not there. I go down to the office, and interrupt
the worsted work there in progress by requesting that a search be made
for my missing umbrella. The young lady whose ear I have gained
kindly condescends to call the porter, and turning me over to that
functionary returns to her worsted. The porter i