The Little Chemist took off his glasses a half-dozen times, wiped them,
and put them back. Then suddenly turned on Medallion. "You mean to
speak to-night?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Regardez ca--well, well!"

Medallion never smoked harder than he did then. The Little Chemist
looked at him nervously again and again, listened towards the door,
fingered with his tumbler, and at last hearing the sound of sleigh-bells,
suddenly came to his feet, and said: "Voila, I will go to my wife." And
catching up his cap, and forgetting his overcoat, he trotted away home in
a fright.

What Medallion did or said to Secord that night neither ever told.
But it must have been a singular scene, for when the humourist pleads or
prays there is no pathos like it; and certainly Medallion's eyes were red
when he rapped up the Little Chemist at dawn, caught him by the
shoulders, turned him round several times, thumped him on the back, and
called him a bully old boy; and then, seeing the old wife in her quaint
padded night-gown, suddenly hugged her, threw himself into a chair, and
almost shouted for a cup of coffee.

At the same time Mrs. Secord was alternately crying and laughing in her
husband's arms, and he was saying to her: "I'll make a fight for it,
Lesley, a big fight; but you must be patient, for I expect I'll be a
devil sometimes without it. Why, I've eaten a drachm a day of the stuff,
or drunk its equivalent in the tincture. No, never mind praying; be a
brick and fight with me that's the game, my girl."