Sidney looked with amazement at his father.
"He would have turned up years ago, I daresay, if it hadn't been for his wife—she and I never agreed; but old steady, quiet Geoffry, why, when we were boys, we were the best of friends."
"You certainly surprise me, father. Perhaps I have done wrong in persuading him to depart. But I always understood that it had been a desperate quarrel between you, and that you had almost taken an oath never to speak to him again."
"That's all true enough, and it was a desperate quarrel, and he was tight-fisted just then, and let me drift into bankruptcy, rather than help me. It wasn't brotherly, and I'll never forgive him—never. How was the rascal looking, Sid?"
"Like a spare likeness of yourself, sir."
"He's taller than I am by a good two inches. We used to cut notches in the sides of all the doors, when we were boys; comparing notes, we called it. I suppose he's very much altered?"
"Well, never having seen him before, it is difficult to say. But I have no doubt that there's a difference in him since you met last."
"Let me see—it's five-and-twenty years ago, come next February. Twenty-five years to nurse a quarrel, and bear enmity in one's heart against him. What a time!"
"He was anxious to tell me the story of that quarrel, sir, but I declined to listen to it."
"I hope you weren't rude."