The click of the billiard balls reached him as he descended the stairs, but he only sighed and set out manfully for Charing Cross.

On the way he entered a fruiterer's shop and inquired the price of grapes.

They were more than he expected, and he counted out the contents of his trousers pockets before purchasing.
"A little short of change," he remarked cheerfully.

"Yes! all right, I'll take them." He marched out, swinging a paper bag between his fingers, travelled third class to Balham, and sat for a couple of hours with the invalid whom he had come to see, a lonely Italian musician, to whom his coming meant more than all the medicine his doctor could prescribe.

He talked to him glowingly of the success of his recent concert (more than a score of the tickets sold had been paid for secretly by the Colonel himself and his friends), prophesied great things for the future, and laughed away all the poor fellow's fears as to his condition.