"Are you going?"
"Don't think so."
"Then it isn't your mother that brought you up to town, old chap?"
"No."
"Is anything wrong?" asked Harry, after a moment's pause.
It struck him that Romer looked very odd, and as he noted a slightly greyish tinge in Romer's face, he turned pale himself under his becoming sunburn.
"What is the matter?" repeated Harry, who could not be quiet. His weakness lay in the fact that he never, under any circumstances, could entirely "hold his tongue."
Romer put down his stick and hat, which he had been holding, took a chair exactly opposite Harry, stared him in the face, and said in a dry, hard voice, much less slowly than usual—
"There's something I wish you to do."
"You wish me to——"