We pumped out our salutations, hand in hand, grinning and speechless like a couple of veritable Britons.
“Where have you come from?” I cried at length. “How did you find me out?”
“A young lady brought me down from the house,” he said, and could say no more. “Hullo, Dick!” he added presently, and immediately turned, tiptoed to the door, looked out, and came back.
“She’s gone away,” he said—“such a beauty, Dick! She told me you’d taken to living in a hermitage, and offered to show me the way.”
“O!” I said. “It was Miss Christmas, I suppose. She’s a ward of Lord Skene’s. But don’t bother about her. Come and tell me about yourself.”
I got him to the fire, filled him a pipe, and put a light to it for him. As he pulled, letting it out every two minutes, he kept chuckling, like one immensely tickled over something.
“O, I’m nothing!” he said, bursting suddenly into a laugh, and snuggling his head into his shoulders and his hands between his knees. “I’m only ‘Grafto,’ you know—how much for the hair of the dog that bit you, eh, Dick? It’s just delightful to see you again; and you’re not a bit altered either, only for that scrub of yellow on your lip! Rub-a-dub-dub, eh?” The joy in his face moderated an instant. “I can’t grow one,” he said. “It all comes out in perspiration.”
“Never mind, Johnny,” I said. “You’ve got other compensations, haven’t you?”
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got money enough to ‘corner’ all the moustaches in London, if that’s what you mean. But what’s the good, when I can’t grow one of my own?”
He squeaked over the admission; then relit his pipe joyously.