It was a pleasant surprise; and Roland welcomed the prospect of a cheery afternoon with a companion who would soon dispel his melancholy.
“Oh, not so badly,” he said. “I lay pretty quiet and saw as little of Carus Evans as I could.”
“And how is the amiable Brewster?” asked Marston.
“He’s all right, I suppose. He won’t have much of a time this year, though, I should think. He ought to have been captain of the XI., but they say now he is not responsible enough, and Jenkins, a man he absolutely hates, is going to run it instead.”
“So you’re not sorry you have left?”
Roland shrugged his shoulders.
“In a way not; if there hadn’t been a row, though, I should have had a pretty good time this term.”
“Well, you can’t have things both ways. What’s going to happen to you now?”
With most people Roland would have preferred to pass the matter off with some casual remark about his father having got him a good job in the City. He liked sympathy, but was afraid of sympathy when it became pity. He did not want the acquaintances who, six months ago, had been talking of him as “that lucky little beast, Whately,” to speak of him now as “poor old Whately; rotten luck on him; have you heard about it?” But it is always easier to make a confession to a stranger than to a person with whom one is brought into daily contact. Marston was a person with whom he felt intimate, although he knew him so little; and so he found himself telling Marston about the bank and of the dismal future that awaited him.
Marston was highly indignant.