Simpson was an insurance clerk, most commonplace, most steady. He was always having his top hat ironed, and recommending one to buy a pair of trouser stretchers. He went to the theater every Saturday night, and stopped in bed late on Sunday. He was quite content and prosperous on his sixty-five shillings a week, yet, because he had the set at 7 on the third floor, we all waited without saying anything, to him or to each other, for something extraordinary to happen. In his case we thought it might be just vulgar embezzlement--but you can never be sure, it is always the most unlikely thing that happens to the tenant of that third-floor set. When once it gets hold of a man it never lets him go. It never gives him up. More often than not it hands him over to the undertaker. And you know what happened to Dick. There was a story of Bob and Barbara Piety. You’ll like that. If I were writing the story, instead of just gossiping it to you in the dusk, I should call it “The Play’s the Thing.” It is Hamlet--in an Inn of Court. * * * * * Bob Piety lived in the Inn as a bachelor. He married a nice girl--Miss Martin--and took a villa at Norwood. A few months before he married he lent Murphy twenty pounds. We all warned him; Murphy never paid, and made a boast of never paying, but these Irishmen are wheedling, and Bob was pretty flush just then. On this unlucky twenty pounds the whole story hangs. Barbara had babies very quickly; servants’ wages rose each time she changed--and she was always changing. The beer barrel constantly gave out, and it was generally quarter day. Bob had a good post, as the City goes. But four hundred a year, though ample in the Inn, is only a pittance at Norwood, with an extravagant, prolific wife, a seventy-pound villa, and two maids, with a boy to clean the knives. One morning, as Barbara was flicking at Bob’s coat with the clothes brush before he went to the City, she asked him timidly for a new gown. “It won’t cost five pounds,” she said, pulling his coat down at the back. “You don’t like me to look shabby, dear, do you? And, Bob, while I think of it, just leave me Maria’s wages. I’ve had to give her a rise. You can’t get a really decent cook general for less than twenty pounds a year. And we want some new linoleum for the nursery--I’d better order it to----” “I can’t really run to it all, Barbara”--he never called her Barbara except in a crisis, and when they were first married it usually made her cry. “There are the taxes, and I ought to have a new overcoat. And there is Pillew’s bill for the whooping cough. The kids must do without linoleum. Wear anything at the party--or we’ll stop at home. I’m hanged if I know where all the things are coming from. Twenty pounds for one girl--it’s preposterous.” “Twenty pounds! Why, you lent some horrid bachelor that. It would pay Maria for a year. Go and get it out of him.” “It is a bad debt.”