“No, sir, I am sorry to say that I cannot involve myself in any way.”
“Then you must stand by me, Freddie.”
“I won’t.”
“You must. Reflect, old man! We have been pals for years. Your mother likes me.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Well, anyway, we were at school together and you owe me a tenner.”
“Oh, well,” he said in a resigned sort of voice.
“Besides, old thing,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, you know.”
He looked at me in a curious way, and breathed rather hard for some moments.
“Bertie,” he said, “one moment. I will stand a good deal, but I will not stand being expected to be grateful.”
Looking back at it, I can see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in this crisis was my bright idea in buying up most of the contents of the local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he fell asleep in a chair; and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor with a sort of careworn wrinkle between his eyes, and I knew what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple—a mere matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the heap with my