"That's not it--it's what he's done for a--for fellows. Strangers don't know Perkins. You might talk to him for a year, and never hear anything but shop. Then one day you get into a hole, and you would find out another Perkins. "Stand by you?" and he wheeled round. "Rather, and no palaver either; with money and with time and with--other things, that do a fellow more good than the whole concern, and no airs. There's more than one man in our office has cause to--bless Schedule Perkins. "Let me tell you how he got--one chap out of the biggest scrape he'll ever fall into. Do you mind me smoking?" And then he made himself busy with matches and a pipe that was ever going out for the rest of the story. "Well, you see, this man, clerk in our office, had not been long up from the country, and he was young. Wasn't quite bad, but he couldn't hold his own with older fellows. "He got among a set that had suppers in their rooms, and gambled a bit, and he lost and borrowed, and--in fact, was stone broke. "It's not very pleasant for a fellow to sit in his room a week before Christmas, and know that he may be cashiered before the holidays, and all through his own fault. "If it were only himself, why, he might take his licking and go to the Colonies, but it was hard--on his mother--it's always going, out, this pipe!--when he was her only son, and she rather--believed in him. "Didn't sleep much that night--told me himself afterwards--and he concluded that the best way out was to buy opium in the city next day, and take it--pretty stiff dose, you know--next night. "Cowardly rather, of course, but it might be easier for the mater down in Devon--his mother, I mean--did I say he was Devon?--same county as myself--affair would be hushed up, and she would have--his memory clean. "As it happened, though, he didn't buy any opium next day--didn't get the chance; for Perkins came round to his desk, and asked this young chap to have a bit of dinner with him--aye, and made him come. [Illustration: "HE HAD THE JOLLIEST LITTLE DINNER READY YOU EVER SAW."] "He had the jolliest little dinner ready you ever saw, and he insisted, on the fellow smoking, though Perkins hates the very smell of 'baccy, and--well, he got the whole trouble out of him, except the opium. "D'y think he lectured and scolded? Not a bit--that's not Perkins--he left the fool to do his own lecturing, and he did it stiff. I'll tell you what he said: 'Your health must have been much tried by this anxiety, so you must go down and spend Christmas with your mother, and I would venture to suggest that you take her a suitable gift. "'With regard to your debt, you will allow me,' and Perkins spoke as if he had been explaining a schedule, 'to take it over, on two conditions--that you repay me by installments every quarter, and dine with me every Saturday evening for six months.'