His sorrow came about in this wise.
    After service on that Sunday morning, Mr Philip Debarry had left the rest of
the family to go home in the carriage, and had remained at the Rectory to lunch
with his uncle Augustus, that he might consult him touching some letters of
importance. He had returned the letters to his pocket-book but had not returned
the book to his pocket, and he finally walked away leaving the enclosure of
private papers and bank-notes on his uncle's escritoire. After his arrival at
home he was reminded of his omission, and immediately despatched Christian with
a note begging his uncle to seal up the pocket-book and send it by the bearer.
This commission, which was given between three and four o'clock, happened to be
very unwelcome to the courier. The fact was that Mr Christian, who had been
remarkable through life for that power of adapting himself to circumstances
which enables a man to fall safely on all-fours in the most hurried expulsions
and escapes, was not exempt from bodily suffering - a circumstance to which
there is no known way of adapting one's self so as to be perfectly comfortable
under it, or to push it off on to other people's shoulders. He did what he
could: he took doses of opium when he had an access of nervous pains, and he
consoled himself as to future possibilities by thinking that if the pains ever
became intolerably frequent a considerable increase in the dose might put an end
to them altogether. He was neither Cato nor Hamlet, and though he had learned
their soliloquies at his first boarding-school, he would probably have increased
his dose without reciting those masterpieces. Next to the pain itself he
disliked that any one should know of it: defective health diminished a man's
market value; he did not like to be the object of the sort of pity he himself
gave to a poor devil who was forced to make a wry face or give in altogether.
    He had felt it expedient to take a slight dose this afternoon, and still he
was not altogether relieved at the time he set off to the rectory. On returning
with the valuable case safely deposited in his hind pocket he felt increasing
bodily uneasiness, and took another dose. Thinking it likely that he looked
rather pitiable, he chose not to proceed to the house by the carriage-road. The
servants often walked in the park on a Sunday, and he wished to avoid any
meeting. He would make a circuit, get into the house privately, and after
delivering his packet to Mr Debarry,