"Most amazing thing happened to me as I was coming down to dinner. Just
got out of the corridor to the foot of the stairs, when down rushed
something about three foot nothing in a devil of a top-hat and butted me
full in the pit of the stomach, and bounded off like a football. When I
picked it up I found it was a man--give you my word--it was a man. About
so high. Gave me quite a turn."
"That," said I, with a smile, "was my friend Professor Anastasius
Papadopoulos."
"A friend of yours?"
"He had just been calling on me."
"Then I wish you'd entreat him not to go downstairs like a six-inch
shell. I'll have a bruise to-morrow where the crown of his hat caught me
as big as a soup-plate."
I offered the cheerily indignant warrior apologies for my friend's
parabolic method of descent, and suggested Elliman's Embrocation.
"The most extraordinary part of it," he interrupted, "was that when I
picked him up he was weeping like anything. What was he crying about?"
"He is a sensitive creature," said I, "and he doesn't come upon the pit
of the stomach of a Colonel of British Cavalry every day in the week.
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