Mr. Franklyn listened with great sympathy. “It's a rum thing you should be placed like that, George,” he said. “I'm in just the same position.”
George exclaimed eagerly—in love, youth warms to a companion—“You are!”
“Well, not exactly,” Mr. Franklyn admitted. “Very nearly. I've got myself into a brute of a fix over a girl in the lager-beer garden at Earl's Court. She—”
George bounced from the table, seized his hat. “Who cares a damn about your lager-beer girls?” he shouted; slammed from the house.
It was then, while Mr. Franklyn laboriously indited a letter in reply to one received from the lager-beer girl's mother, that George paced Meath Street.
II.
At breakfast with Mr. Franklyn upon the following morning, he was in brighter trim—apologised for his over-night abruptness; apologised for the hasty meal he was making; announced that he was off to see his Mary.
As he lit his pipe, “I'll see you at hospital this morning some time, old chap,” he said. “I shall dash in to fix up with the Dean about taking Bingham's place in that practice up in Yorkshire.”
Mr. Franklyn prodded for another slice of bacon. “You can't, old chap,” he remarked. “That's filled.”
George shouted: “Filled! What do you mean?”