“I hardly like to tell you.”
“Do you think his peculiarities have escaped me?”
“At the public-house.”
“Ask him to come to me.”
Compton went to the public-house, and there, to his no small disgust, found Mr. Reginald Bassett playing the fiddle, and four people, men and women, dancing to the sound, while one or two more smoked and looked on.
Compton restrained himself till the end of that dance, and then stepped up to Reginald and whispered him, “Mamma wants to see you directly.”
“Tell her I'm busy.”
“I shall tell her nothing of the kind. You know she is very ill, and has not seen you yet; and now she wants to. So come along at once, like a good fellow.”
“Youngster,” said Reginald, “it is a rule with me never to leave a young woman for an old one.”
“Not for your mother?”