and his respectable top-hat tumbled to the
floor, where unconsciously he gave it a kick. A grotesque and distressing
sight.

Only one person beheld it, and this, as it happened, a friend of Mr.
Daffy's. In the far corner sat a large, ruddy-cheeked man, whose eye rested
upon the sufferer with a look of greeting disturbed by compassion. Mr.
Lott, a timber-merchant of this town, was in every sense of the word a more
flourishing man than the asthmatic tailor; his six-feet-something of sound
flesh and muscle, his ripe sunburnt complexion, his attitude of eupeptic
and broad-chested ease, left the other, by contrast, scarce his proverbial
fraction of manhood. At a year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be
old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage,
with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a
toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the
measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's
professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations
between the two men. Neither had ever been in the other's house, but they
had long met, once a week or so, at the Liberal Club, where it was their
habit to play together a game of draughts. Occasionally they conversed; but
it was a rather one-sided dialogue, for whereas the tailor had a sprightly
intelligence and--so far as his breath allowed--a ready flow of words, the
timber-merchant found himself at a disadvantage when mental activity was
called for. The best-natured man in the world, Mr. Lott would sit smiling
and content so long as he had only to listen; asked his opinion (on
anything but timber), he betrayed by a knitting of the brows, a rolling of
the eyes, an inflation of the cheeks, and other signs of discomposure, the
serious effort it cost him to shape a thought and to utter it. At times Mr.
Daffy got on to the subject of social and political reform, and, after
copious exposition, would ask what Mr. Lott thought. He knew the
timber-merchant too well to expect an immediate reply. There came a long
pause, during which Mr. Lott snorted a little, shuffled in his chair, and
stared at vacancy, until at length, with a sudden smile of relief he
exclaimed, 'Do you know _my_ idea!' And the idea, often rather explosively
stated, was generally marked by common-sense of the bull-headed, British
kind.

'Bad this morning,' remarked Mr. Lott, abruptly but sympathetic