‘I am deeply touched by the interest your lordship vouchsafes to my concerns.’
‘Try and live five years, and you’ll have a retiring allowance. The last fellow did, but was eaten by a crocodile out bathing.’ And with this he resumed his Times, and turned away, while Walpole hastened off to his room, in a frame of mind very far from comfortable or reassuring.
CHAPTER LII
A CHANCE AGREEMENT
As Dick Kearney and young O’Shea had never attained any close intimacy—a strange sort of half-jealousy, inexplicable as to its cause, served to keep them apart—it was by mere accident that the two young men met one morning after breakfast in the garden, and on Kearney’s offer of a cigar, the few words that followed led to a conversation.
‘I cannot pretend to give you a choice Havana, like one of Walpole’s,’ said Dick, ‘but you’ll perhaps find it smokeable.’
‘I’m not difficult,’ said the other; ‘and as to Mr. Walpole’s tobacco, I don’t think I ever tasted it.’
‘And I,’ rejoined the other, ‘as seldom as I could; I mean, only when politeness obliged me.’
‘I thought you liked him?’ said Gorman shortly.