and
then continued: "You, Mr Welsh, are a really wonderfully typical rascal. I
am glad to have met you. You can now put on your coat and go." As Welsh
still sat defiantly, he added, "_At once_, sir! or you may possibly find
policemen and four-wheeled cabs outside. I have something else to say to
Dr Twiddel."

With the best air he could muster, Welsh silently cocked his hat on the
side of his head, threw his coat over his arm, and was walking out, when a
watchful waiter intercepted him.

"Your bill, sare."

"My friend is paying."

"No, Mr Welsh," cried the real Essington; "I think you had better pay for
this dinner yourself."

Welsh saw the vigilant proprietor already coming towards him, and with a
look that augured ill for Twiddel when they were alone, he put his hand in
his pocket.

"Ha, ha!" laughed Essington, "the inevitable bill!"

"And now," he continued, turning to Twiddel, "you, doctor, seem to me a
most unfortunately constructed biped; your nose is just long enough to
enable you to be led into a singularly original adventure, and your brains
just too few to carry it through creditably. Hang me if I wouldn't have
made a better job of the business! But before you disappear from the
company of gentlemen I must ask you to do one favour for me. First thing
to-morrow morning you will go down to Clankwood, tell what lie you please,
and obtain my legal discharge, or whatever it's called. After that you may
go to the devil--or, what comes much to the same thing, to Mr Welsh--for all
I care. You will do this without fail?"

"Ye--es," stammered Twiddel, "certainly, sir."

"You may now retire--and the faster the better."

As the crestfallen doctor followed his ally out of the restaurant, the
Baron exclaimed in disgust, "Ze cads! You are too merciful. You should
punish."

"My dear Baron, after all I am obliged to these rascals for the most
amusing time I have ever had in my life, and one of the best friends I've
ever made."

"Ach, Bonker! Bot vat do I say? You are not Bonker no more, and yet may I
call you so, jost for ze sake of pleasant times? It vill be too hard to
change."

"I'd rather you would, Baron. It will be a perpetual in memoriam record of
my departed virtues."

"Departed, Bonker?"

"Departed, Baron," his friend repeated with a sigh; "for how can I ever
hope to have so spacious a field for them again? Believe me, they will
wither in an atmosphere of orthodoxy. And now let us order dinner."