He has a right to my gratitude, which I freely
admit. He has found an opening for me when I badly
needed one and had no immediate prospects. But still,
one may pay too high a price even for that, and I should
feel that I was doing so if I had to give up my
individuality and my manhood.
We had an incident that evening which was so
characteristic that I must tell you of it. Cullingworth
has an air gun which fires little steel darts. With this
he makes excellent practice at about twenty feet, the
length of the back room. We were shooting at a mark
after dinner, when he asked me whether I would hold a
halfpenny between my finger and thumb, and allow him to
shoot it out. A halfpenny not being forthcoming, he took
a bronze medal out of his waistcoat pocket, and I
held that tip as a mark. Kling!" went the air gun, and
the medal rolled upon the floor.
"Plumb in the centre," said he.
"On the contrary," I answered, "you never hit it at
all!"
"Never hit it! I must have hit it!"
"I am confident you didn't."
"Where's the dart, then?"
"Here," said I, holding up a bleeding forefinger,
from which the tail end of the fluff with which the dart
was winged was protruding.
I never saw a man so abjectly sorry for anything in
my life. He used language of self-reproach which would
have been extravagant if he had shot off one of my limbs.
Our positions were absurdly reversed; and it was he who
sat collapsed in a chair, while it was I, with the dart
still in my finger, who leaned over him and laughed the
matter off.
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