When a man with the constitution of Montague Dartie has exercised
self-control for months from religious motives, and remains unrewarded,
he does not curse God and die, he curses God and lives, to the distress
of his family.

Winifred--a plucky woman, if a little too fashionable--who had borne
the brunt of him for exactly twenty-one years, had never really believed
that he would do what he now did. Like so many wives, she thought she
knew the worst, but she had not yet known him in his forty-fifth year,
when he, like other men, felt that it was now or never. Paying on
the 2nd of October a visit of inspection to her jewel case, she was
horrified to observe that her woman's crown and glory was gone--the
pearls which Montague had given her in '86, when Benedict was born, and
which James had been compelled to pay for in the spring of '87, to save
scandal. She consulted her husband at once. He 'pooh-poohed' the matter.
They would turn up! Nor till she said sharply: "Very well, then, Monty,
I shall go down to Scotland Yard myself," did he consent to take the
matter in hand. Alas! that the steady and resolved continuity of design
necessary to the accomplishment of sweeping operations should be liable
to interruption by drink. That night Dartie returned home without a
care in the world or a particle of reticence. Under normal conditions
Winifred would merely have locked her door and let him sleep it off, but
torturing suspense about her pearls had caused her to wait up for him.
Taking a small revolver from his pocket and holding on to the dining
table, he told her at once that he did not care a cursh whether she
lived s'long as she was quiet; but he himself wash tired o' life.
Winifred, holding onto the other side of the dining table, answered:

"Don't be a clown, Monty. Have you been to Scotland Yard?"