"Aye, lad." The old fellow's eyes gleamed again. "Then it'll be our race. We'll both be in it, won't we, Andy? And if you pass the post first, I shall have a right to throw up my hat. And why shouldn't you? The favourite don't always win."
"I'm not expecting to do anything remarkable, Jack. I'm not such a fool as that."
"You're no fool, or you'd never have been put to the trouble of refusin' my shop," observed Jack with emphasis. "And in the end I'm not sure but what you're right. I've never tried to rise above where I was born; but I don't know as there's any call for you to step down. I don't know as I did my duty by the old gentleman in temptin' you. I'm not sure he'd have liked it, though he'd have said nothing; he'd never have let me see—not him!" He sighed and smiled over his reverential memories of the old gentleman, yet his eyes twinkled rather maliciously as he said to Andy, "Dinin' at Halton again to-night?"
"No," laughed Andy, "I'm not. I'm coming to supper with you if you'll have me. What have you got?"
"Cold boiled aitch-bone, and apple-pie, and a Cheshire in good condition."
"Oh, that's prime! But I must go and change first. I've walked fifteen or sixteen miles, and I must get into a clean shirt."
"We don't dress for supper—not o' Sundays," Jack informed him gravely.
"Oh, get out, Jack!" called Andy from the door.
"Supper at nine precise, carriages at eleven," Jack called after him, pursuing his joke to the end with keen relish.
Andy walked back to his lodgings, in the old phrase "happy as a king," and infinitely the happier because old Jack had taken it so well, had understood, and, though disappointed, had not been hurt or wounded. There was no breach in their affection or in their mutual confidence. And now, he felt, he had to justify himself in Jack's eyes, to justify his refusal of a safe five hundred pounds a year. The refusal became, as he thought over it, a spur to effort, to action. "I must put my back into it," said Andy to himself, and made up his mind to most strenuous exertions to develop that rather shy and coy timber business of his in London.