Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 105, Vol. III, January 2, 1886

No. 105.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1886.
By GRANT ALLEN,
Author of ‘Babylon,’ ‘Strange Stories,’ etc. etc.
About one o’clock in the morning, by a flickering fire of half-dead embers, young men of twenty-five are very apt to grow confidential. Now, it was one o’clock gone, by the marble timepiece on Edward Hawthorn’s big mantel-shelf in King’s Bench Walk, Temple; and Edward Hawthorn and Harry Noel were each of them just twenty-five; so it is no matter for wonder at all that the conversation should just then have begun to take a very confidential turn indeed, especially when one remembers that they had both nearly finished their warm glass of whisky toddy, and that it was one of those chilly April evenings when you naturally cower close over the fire to keep your poor blood from curdling bodily altogether within you.
‘It’s certainly very odd, Noel, that my father should always seem so very anxious to keep me from going back to Trinidad, even for a mere short visit.’
Harry Noel shook out the ashes from his pipe as he answered quietly: ‘Fathers are altogether the most unaccountable, incomprehensible, mysterious, and unmanageable of creatures. For my own part, I’ve given up attempting to fathom them altogether.’
Edward smiled half deprecatingly. ‘Ah, but you know, Noel,’ he went on in a far more serious tone than his friend’s, ‘my father isn’t at all like that; he’s never refused me money or anything else I’ve wanted; he’s been the most liberal and the kindest of men to me; but for some abstruse and inconceivable reason—I can’t imagine why—he’s always opposed my going back home even to visit him.’
‘If Sir Walter would only act upon the same principle, my dear boy, I can tell you confidentially I’d be simply too delighted. But he always acts upon the exact contrary. He’s in favour of my coming down to the Hall in the very dampest, dreariest, and dullest part of all Lincolnshire, at the precise moment of time when I want myself to be off to Scotland, deer-stalking or grouse-shooting; and he invariably considers all my applications for extra coin as at least inopportune—as the papers say—if not as absolutely extravagant, or even criminal. A governor who deals lavishly while remaining permanently invisible on the other side of the Atlantic, appears to me to combine all possible and practical advantages.’