"Uncommonly. You're improving, old fellow. Heigh-ho! my sentimental days are gone by. Nothing like office-life for rubbing off that kind of bloom. Do you remember the girls' school, and my deep indignation when you would insist upon singing about 'the merry little maiden of sweet sixteen'?"
"An awfully good song, by the bye," put in Arthur.
His friend did not notice the interruption. "I am not so sure, after all," he said thoughtfully, "that hard work is not the best thing at our age. Everybody could not pass as you have done through the temptations of an idle youth."
Arthur laughed, but he looked at his companion affectionately: "Come, come, Mac, that kind of thing won't quite fit in, you know—philosophy and compliment in one breath. But here we are. Now, if you're not hungry I am; so a truce to reflections. They shall come, if you still feel anxious for them, in the shape of dessert."
The young men sat down to dinner together, and Arthur took care it should be a particularly good one. He and McArthur had been chums at Eton, and although the very different circumstances of their after-life had necessarily thrown them apart, they had still kept up their friendship in a certain spasmodic way.
It had been broken at times by a slight want of consideration on the one side, and a certain pride, the growth of poverty, on the other; but real mutual affection and respect had been strong enough to heal the different little breaks, and the young men had reached the point of understanding each other, and of making mutual allowance for the weaknesses engendered by circumstances.
They did not often meet, for their lives were very differently spent, and McArthur was wise enough to know that for him to enter at all into his friend's pursuits or to frequent his circle would be sheer folly. This it was that occasionally hurt and fretted Arthur. But a meeting such as that of this day was a source of real pleasure to both.
During the short hour everything life held of weariness and discontent was forgotten. They rattled on as if they had been still school-boys, with no present care to oppress their lives and a brilliant future before them.