"It is, though," said Ashton, "but what of that? you don't surely call twelve o'clock bad hours for once in a way?"
"No, not for once in a way," replied George; "but I have never kept my mother up so late before. Good-bye, old fellow. Promise to come and see me some night this week. There is my address." And so saying, George ran out into the street and made his way towards Islington.
That was an anxious night for Mrs. Weston. "What can have happened?" she asked herself a hundred times. Fortunately, Mr. Brunton called, and he assisted to while away the time.
"George does not often stay out of an evening, does he?" he asked.
"No, never," replied Mrs. Weston; "unless it is with his friend, Charles Hardy, and then I always know where they are, and what they are doing. But something extraordinary must have happened to-night, and I feel very anxious to know what it is. Not that I think he is anywhere he ought not to be. I feel sure he is not," continued Mrs. Weston confidently; "but what it is that has detained him, I am altogether at a loss to guess."
"Well, I will not leave you till he comes home," said Mr. Brunton.
It was one o'clock before George arrived; it was too late to get an omnibus, and a cab, he thought, was altogether out of the question; therefore he had to walk the whole distance—or rather run, for he was as anxious now to get home as they were to see him.
He was very much surprised, and, if it must be confessed, rather vexed on some accounts, to find Mr. Brunton waiting up for him with his mother.
His explanation of what had happened, told in his merry, ingenuous way, at once dissipated any anxiety they had felt.
"I recollect Harry Ashton well," said Mrs. Weston. "Dr. Seaward pointed him out to me, the first time I went to see you at Folkestone, as being one of his best scholars; and he came home once with you in the holidays to spend a day or two with us, did he not?"