"What else is there to take?"
"Thought you might be walking."
"Oh, walking be ——!" He climbed into a hansom.
"I'll walk with you, Harry. I haven't had exercise enough."
Harry suggested that they should go home by the Embankment. When they had cut down a narrow street to it, he put his arm in Andy's and led him across the road. They leant on the parapet, looking at the river. The night was fine, but hazy and still—a typical London night.
"You've given me a splendid evening," said Andy. "And what a good sort those girls were!"
"Yes," said Harry, rather absently, "not a bad sort. Doris has got her head on her shoulders, and she's quite straight. Poor Sally's come one awful cropper. She won't come another; she's had more than enough of it. So one doesn't mind her being a bit snarly."
Poor Sally! Andy had had no idea of anything of the sort, but he had an instinct that people who come one cropper—and one only—feel that one badly.
"I'm feeling happy to-night, old fellow," said Harry suddenly. "You may not happen to know it, but I've gone it a bit for the last two or three years, made rather a fool of myself, and—well, one gets led on. Now I've made up my mind to chuck all that. Some of it's all right—at any rate it seems to happen; but I've had enough. I really do want to work at the politics, you know."
"It's all before you, if you do," said Andy in unquestioning loyalty.