"My dear old chap!" Earnestness, conviction in his tone. "I feel as if I shouldn't touch food again for months."
"I know. That's not an unusual symptom." Masters affected to laugh. "I felt like that. And if you go to the saloon table you'll feel like it for quite a while. Look here now!" He spoke suddenly, as if inspired with an idea. "Will you leave your commissariat to me?"
"To you! But why on earth, now, should you be troubled to——"
Masters let a shade of annoyance creep over his face. There was no misreading it. Assuming, too, a tone of regret; he said:
"You mean that? That you would rather I did not interfere?"
The facial expression and voice had the desired effect. Cheated the younger man—surely he must be very young!—into expostulating:
"My dear old chap! For Heaven's sake don't think I mean anything of that sort! I'll do whatever you say."
So he would; that was plainly evident. The strong will had conquered the weaker. Masters felt overjoyed at his success. Most hearts have secret drawers in them containing some good traits: if we can only find the spring.
Moreover, strange as it seemed, Masters was conscious of the birth of a liking for his young companion. He was surprised, too, to realize that he was but a boy. Had thought him five-and-twenty at first; now imagined him to be not much over one-and-twenty years of age—if that.
It was, in a measure, a welcome surprise. His imagination had portrayed Rigby as a hardened debauchee; sunken in vice as sodden in drink. Mingled with the surprise, too, was a feeling of wonder that Gracie's mother should, with one younger than herself——But there, he told himself, there was no accounting for these things; there was no logic or reason in them.