'And you are very happy, Humphrey?' asked Martin.
'Happy!' cried Humphrey Statham; 'my dear Martin, I never knew what happiness was before. I rather think,' he continued, with a smile, 'that laziness may have something to do with it. You see, Alice doesn't care much about my being absent for the whole of the day, as I should necessarily be if I attended strictly to business; and as, living as we do, I do not spend anything like my income, I have knocked off City work to a certain extent, and leave the business in Mr. Collins's charge. He sees how matters are tending, and has made overtures to buy it, and shortly I shall let him have it to himself, I suppose. Not that my life is wholly objectless; there's the garden to look after, and Bell's education to superintend, and Alice to be read to; and then at night I potter away at a book on Maritime Law, which I am compiling, so that I find the twenty-four hours almost too short for what I have to do.'
'And Alice?'
'I think that I may say she is perfectly happy. I have not a thought which she does not share, not a wish which is not inspired by her.'
'And little Bell? What a charming child she has grown to be! To go back, Humphrey, for the first and only time to that conversation which we had in your chambers, I may say that circumstanced as I am in regard to that child, I was delighted to notice the fancy she seemed to take to me to-day.'
'Curiously enough she has had from the first mention of your name an odd interest about you, and has frequently asked when you were coming to see us.'
'Does--does Alice know anything about that story?'
'Only so far as I am concerned. I told her of my early attachment to Emily Mitchell, and the story of how I lost her; but she has not the least idea of Emily's farther career beyond the fact that Bell is Emily's child.'
'True to the last, true as steel!' said Martin Gurwood, grasping his friend's hand.
'And now tell me of yourself; Martin,' said Humphrey Statham; 'what you are doing, what are your plans?'