annot understand it. It's of no use to talk about
it, because it is quite impossible to understand it."

"Then don't let's talk about it, especially when you've got something
else to do."

"Temper, temper, Eliza! You must guard against that. I was not going to
talk about luck. I was going to give you an instance of luck, which
happened to come within my own personal experience. It is the case of a
man of the name of Chumpleigh, in our office, and would probably
interest and amuse you. I do not know if I have ever mentioned
Chumpleigh to you."

"Yes, you've told me all about him several times."

I might have mentioned Chumpleigh to Eliza, but I am sure that I have
never told her all about him. However, I was not going to sulk, and so
I told her the story again. The story would not have been so long if
she hadn't interrupted me so frequently.

When I had finished, she said that it was time to go to bed, and I had
wasted the evening.

I owned that possibly I had been chatting rather longer than I had
intended, but I would still get those accounts done, and sit up to do
them.

"And that means extra gas," she said. "That's the way money gets
wasted."

"There are many men in my place," I said, "who would refuse to sit down
to work as late as this. I don't. Why? On principle. Because it's
through the cultivation of the sort of thing that I cultivate one
arrives at fortune. Think what fortune would mean to us. Big house,
large garden, servants, carriages. I should come in from a day with the
hounds, and perhaps say I felt rather done up, and would like a glass
of champagne. No question of expense--not a word about it--money no
object. You'd just get the bottle out of the sideboard, and I should
have my glass, and they'd finish it in the kitchen, and----"

"_Are_ you going to begin, or are you not?" asked Eliza.

"This minute," I replied, opening the black bag. I examined the
contents carefully.

"Well," I said, "this is a very strange occurrence indeed--most
unaccountable! I don't remember ever to have done anything of the kind
before, but I seem to have forgotten to bring that work from the city.
Dear me! I shall be forgetting my head next."

Eliza's reply that this would be no great loss did not seem to me to be
either funny, or polite, or even true. "You strangely forget yourself,"
I replied, and turned the gas out sharply.

SHAKESPEARE

I led up to it, saying to Eliza, not at all in a complaining