George did not altogether like the tone in which all this was said. It was a little sneering, and altogether careless. Nothing was so difficult to Routh, as it always is to men of his class, as the sustained assumption of interest in any affairs but their own; and now that his anxieties of the previous day were relieved, and he had no immediate object in which Dallas was concerned, to gain, he was impatient of any interruption of his immediate pursuits, and harsh and rough with him. He sat down, and ate his breakfast hastily, while he read a heap of letters which lay beside his plate.
"I don't know, indeed," George had replied good-humouredly to the speech which had jarred upon him; "but you are busy, Routh, and I won't trouble you with my business just now. Mrs. Routh and I will discuss the letter to Mr. Carruthers."
"A telegram for Mr. Dallas," said the irreproachable servant, who entered the room while George was speaking. "Please to sign this, sir."
Routh looked up from his letters, Harriet set down the teapot, and quietly taking up the slip of paper which the man had laid upon the table by George's elbow, signed it with his name, writing it with a pencil which hung at her waist. The servant left the room, and George said:
"I was not wrong. This is from my uncle, and it comes from Amherst. He says: 'Meet me at Morley's Hotel this evening, at six.'"
"Very odd," said Routh. "Well, George, I am sure I wish you all manner of luck with your American uncle."
He had taken up his hat and gloves as he spoke, and now rang for the servant, whom he directed to call a hansom. The man went to the door, and transferred the commission to a street-boy lingering about there, who ran off, and returned in two minutes with the required vehicle. George and Routh were standing on the steps as the boy reappeared, talking. They shook hands, and Routh was stepping into the cab, when George followed him, and said, in a whisper:
"Was it not extraordinary the boy did not recognize poor Deane?"
"What boy?" said Routh, in astonishment, and stepping back on to the flagway.
"Why, that boy; the boy you always employ. He brought you my message the other day. Don't you remember it was he brought your note to poor Deane that day at the tavern?"