At the appointed time Mr. Streightley walked on to the platform, and found his friend already awaiting him. Mr. Charles Yeldham was indeed instantly recognisable. In all the crowd of pushing anxious passengers he stood perfectly calm and self-possessed, heeding neither the porters wheeling heavy barrows, who shouted to him "By your leave!" and charged straight at him with the obvious intention of grinding him to powder; the grooms, vainly endeavouring to hold their braces of pointers, which invariably came to grief through disinclination to go the same side of the columns supporting the roof; the helpless female, or the excited male passengers. There were men in every variety of travelling-dress, in wide-awakes, and pork-pie hats, and cloth caps, and fezzes; in suits of dittoes in every conceivable variety of check, in knickerbockers and gaiters, in tightly-fitting 'horsy' trousers, and wearing couriers' bags or slung race-glasses. But among them placidly walked Charles Yeldham, in his broadish-brimmed chimney-pot, his high-buttoning black waistcoat, his Oxford-mixture trousers very baggy at the knees, and his Wellington boots--among them, but not of them--with a pleasant smile on his cheery face, and with his head full of the case of Marshland versus the Bagglehole Improvement Company, the pleadings in which he had to draw. But he saw Streightley at once, and as he caught sight of him he again noticed the change in his friend's style of dress, which he had not thought of since their meeting at the Botanical Gardens, and laughed quietly to himself.
"This is good, Yeldham; I knew you would come," said Streightley, as the train moved out of the station. "You're just the man I want for a sound practical opinion."
"On an estate which you've bought, Robert? Yes; my knowledge of the value of land, derived from occasionally looking out on to and running round the Temple Gardens; the quick eye with which, from constant practice, I shall be able to detect any shortcomings in the building, and suggest improvements; my general acquaintance with farming-stock and agricultural produce, will enable me to give you some very valuable advice."
"You're laughing at me, old friend; but it don't much matter; and I know of old that you always will have your joke. No; it was not exactly on these points that I wanted to consult you,--in fact, not at all upon them. With all your pretended ignorance, you are a country-bred man, and one able to give a thoroughly practical opinion on the value of Middlemeads and its capabilities; and moreover, by this means I get you out quietly into the air and away from these stivy chambers, and have the opportunity of a long quiet talk with you about--about any subject that may turn up, without the risk of your being worried by perpetual visits of attorneys' clerks, or the annoyance of seeing you constantly fidgetting to get to your desk again and get to work at something else."
"O ho, Master Robert! then this is a trap, is it? a kind of perforce holiday into which you have led me?"
"Not at all. Wait until the day is over, until I've said all I've got to say, and you've heard it, before you complain. And even if it were--supposing it were a holiday, you don't take so many of them that you need grudge yourself this outing."
"So far as that goes we're both in the same boat, I think; but I have had a holiday, and only a couple of days ago, when I was at the Botanical--Why, by Jove! you were there too."
"Of course I was. That is good! our each giving the other credit for constant industry, and then recollecting that we had lapsed into idleness together. By the way, that Mr. Frere--who lives with you, doesn't he?--what sort of fellow is he?"
"A capital fellow," said honest old Charley Yeldham; "a good deal younger than we are, you know, Robert, and consequently more impulsive, and what he would call 'gushing'--and yet older in some respects too; older in cynicism and so-called knowledge of life, and--; but a very good fellow, a capital youngster. I've known him since he was a boy. He was a pupil of my father's."
"O, indeed! Has he--has he been very long intimate with Mr. Guyon's family, do you know?"