He scrapes it, on the whole, a little roughly, but that is because he is so anxious to light up again, and I discovered long ago that he has signed an agreement with his wife to go to bed at half-past twelve.

For some time I could not understand why he had a silver rim put on the bowl.

I noticed the change in the tap at once, and the natural conclusion would have been that the bowl had cracked.

But it never had the tap of a cracked bowl.

I was reluctant to believe that the man through the wall was merely some vulgar fellow, and I felt that he could not be so, or else he would have smoked his meerschaum more.