“By Jove, Kel, you 're right! he's always wide awake, and that stupid leaden-eyed look he has, has done him good service in the world.”
“I say, old Oxley, shall we dash in and unearth him? Or shall we let him fancy that we know nothing of his being here at all?”
“What does Hammond say?”
“I'd say, leave him to himself,” replied a deep voice; “you can't go and see him without asking him to dinner; and he 'll walk into us after, do what we will.”
“Not, surely, if we don't play,” said Oxley.
“Would n't he, though? Why, he 'd screw a bet out of a bishop.”
“I 'd do with him as Tomkinson did,” said his Lordship; “he had him down at his lodge in Scotland, and bet him fifty pounds that he could n't pass a week without a wager. Jack booked the bet and won it, and Tomkinson franked the company.”
“What an artful villain my counterpart must be!” I said. I stared in the glass to see if I could discover the sheepish-ness they laid such stress on. I was pale, to be sure, and my hair a light brown, but so was Shelley's; indeed, there was a wild, but soft expression in my eyes that resembled his, and I could recognize many things in our natures that seemed to correspond. It was the poetic dreaminess, the lofty abstractedness from all the petty cares of every-day life which vulgar people set down as simplicity; and thus,—
“The soaring thoughts that reached the stare,
Seemed ignorance to them.”
As I uttered the consolatory lines, I felt two hands firmly pressed over my eyes, while a friendly voice called out, “Found out, old fellow! run fairly to earth!” “Ask him if he knows you,” whispered another, but in a voice I could catch.