“You know Gideon? Who doesn’t, for that matter? I had the luck to do him a good turn a week ago, and he came in this morning with a tip--actually went out of his way to cross Lombard Street and get out of his cab and look in. “He said ‘Good morning. Buy Diamond Jubilees--all you can get.’ And I didn’t look up from my letters, but thought it was Jones, who’s always dropping in to play the fool, and remembered our loathsome bet. So I merely said, ‘Shan’t! Clear out!’ Then I lifted my head just in time to see Gideon departing, about as angry as a big man can be with a little one, and my clerks all looking as though they’d suddenly heard the last trump. “I tore after him, but too late; of course he’d gone. Then I dashed to his place of business, but he’d got an appointment somewhere else and didn’t turn up till after twelve, by which time the tip was useless. And he showed me pretty plainly that I may regard myself as nothing to him henceforth. After that I was too sick to work, so went West to see a man and get some new clothes. Like a fool, I never remembered that with this bet on me I couldn’t lie too low. It was all right at the hairdresser’s, as you may imagine; but I’m accustomed to let my tailor advise me a good deal, and you can see the holy fix I was in after he’d measured me. I got out of that by saying that I’d drop in again and see his stuffs and his pictures by daylight; then I had a glass of port at Long’s, and remembering my youngsters, went to find a shop where I could get masks and wigs and nonsense for them, because they are proposing to do some charades or something to wind up their holiday before they go back to school. Then, in the fog, I got muddled up and lost myself about a quarter of a mile from where we met. First I had a row with a brute from Covent Garden Market, who ran into me with a barrow of brussels-sprouts. We exchanged sentiments for a while, and then the coster said-- “‘I don’t arsk of you to pick ’em up, do I?’ “Well, of course, as he didn’t ask me to pick them up, I immediately began to do it. And the man was so astonished that he stopped swearing and called several of his friends to make an audience. So that was all right as far as it went; but just then a bobby appeared out of the din and clatter of the street, and ordered me to move on. Of course I wouldn’t, and while I was arguing with him, and asking for his reason, a fire-engine dashed out of the bowels of the fog and knocked me down in a heap before I knew who’d hit me.