Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/190

 chances against getting it back again. The last of these reflections is apt to be painful, and the painfulness is complicated and increased when there happen to have been several pubs and a like number of hurried farewell beers in the recent past.

And for months after that you cannot get rid of the idea that that half-sov. might be about your clothes somewhere. It haunts you. You turn your pockets out, and feel the lining of your coat and vest inch by inch, and examine your letters, papers―everything you happen to have had in your pockets that day―over and over again, and by-and-bye you peer into envelopes and unfold papers that you didn't have in your pocket at all, but might have had. And when the novelty of the first search has worn off, and the fit takes you, you make another. Even after many months have passed away, some day―or night―when you are hard up for tobacco and a drink, you suddenly think of that late lamented half-sov, and are moved by adverse circumstances to look through your old clothes in a sort of forlorn hope, or to give good luck a sort of chance to surprise you―the only chance that you can give it.

By-the-way, seven-and-six of that half quid should have gone to the landlord of the hotel where we stayed last, and somehow, in spite of this enlightened age, the loss of it seemed a judgment; and seeing that the boat was old and primitive, and there was every sign of a three days' sou'-easter, we sincerely hoped that judgment was complete―that supreme wrath had been appeased by the fine of ten bob without adding any Jonah business to it.