CHAPTER XXXI. TWO FRIENDS
It was like a return to his former self—to his gay, happy, careless nature—for Tony Butler to find himself with his friend Skeflfy. As painters lay layers of the same color on, one over the other, to deepen the effect, so does youth double itself by companionship. As for Skeflfy, never did a schoolboy exult more in a holiday; and, like a schoolboy, his spirits boiled over in all manner of small excesses, practical jokes on his fellow-passengers, and all those glorious tomfooleries, to be able to do which with zest is worth all the enjoyment that ever cynicism yielded twice told.
“I was afraid you would n't come. I did n't see you when the coach drove into the inn-yard; and I was so disappointed,” said Tony, as he surveyed the mass of luggage which the guard seemed never to finish depositing before his friend.
“Two portmanteaus, sir,” said the guard, “three carpetbags, a dressing-case, a hat-box, a gun-case, bundle of sticks and umbrellas, and I think this parrot and cage are yours.”
“A parrot, Skeflfy!”
“For Mrs. Maxwell, you dog: she loves parrots, and I gave ten guineas for that beggar, because they assured me he could positively keep up a conversation; and the only thing he can say is, 'Don't you wish you may get it?'”
No sooner had the bird heard the words than he screamed them out with a wild and scornful cry that made them sound like a bitter mockery.
“There,—that's at me,” whispered Skeflfy,—“at me and my chance of Tilney. I 'm half inclined to wring his neck when I hear it.”
“Are you looking for any one, Harris?” asked Tony of a servant in livery who had just ridden into the yard.