"I am altogether at your service. The first thing for you to do, however, is to give up your rooms at the hotel, and to come here to me."
"With your permission, I shall decline doing that," said Max, drily.
"Why?"
"Because I don't wish to bring you into trouble with your superiors. Can you give me your word of honour that the visit you paid us this summer passed unremarked, that it has called down on you no word of blame?"
George looked down.
"Well, I certainly was favoured with some rather sharp observations from the chief; but there are bounds even to his jurisdiction and to the regard I owe to my position. I do not mean to offer up to it my friends and private connections."
"You need not do so," returned the young surgeon; "but there is no occasion to go out of your way to challenge a conflict. You know I have not a very high opinion of gratuitous sacrifices, and the invitation you are now so kind as to give me comes under that head. No use to argue, George. I shall remain at the hotel. You will compromise yourself quite sufficiently in the eyes of all loyal citizens by owning me as a friend at all."
The refusal was expressed in so decided a tone that George saw it would be useless to insist; so he yielded the point.
"Well, let me congratulate you on coming in to the fortune, at all events," he said. "Though it be not a very considerable one, it will, I suppose, be of importance to you."
"Certainly; I am especially glad on my father's account. He can now devote himself to his beloved science undisturbed by those material cares which have hitherto held the front rank. I, too, gain by it my much-desired independence. I should long ago have resigned my post at the hospital had it not been necessary to provide for our household an assured income which can henceforth be dispensed with. I shall set to work to establish a practice now and marry."