"That it shall be our turn some day—some early day, I hope—to visit him, and say:—'We are in a good position in life, and above all help, shall we be friends again?'"
"To walk into his counting-house, and surprise him?" cried the father; "for me to say:—'I owe all to my son's energy and cleverness, and can afford to face you, without being suspected of wanting your money.' Well, we ought to bear and forbear; I don't think it would be so very hard to make it up with him!"
It was a subject that discomposed Mr. Hinchford—that kept him restless and disturbed. His son detected this, and brushed all the papers into a heap, thrust them into the recesses of his desk, and began hunting about for the backgammon-board. The past had been ever a subject kept in the background, and of late years his father had not seemed capable of hearing any news, good or bad, with a fair semblance of composure. The change in him had been a matter of regret with Sidney; far off in the distance, perhaps, there might loom a great trouble for him—he almost fancied so at times. Meanwhile, there were troubles nearer than that fancied one—man is born unto them, as the sparks fly upwards.
CHAPTER IV.
PERPLEXITY.
Harriet Wesden had spoken more than once to Mattie of the Eveleighs, a family which plays no part in these pages, although, from Harriet's knowledge of it, every after page of this story will be influenced. A Miss Eveleigh, an only daughter, and a spoiled one, had been a schoolfellow of Harriet's; an intimacy had existed between them in the old days, and when school days were ended for good, a correspondence was kept up, which resulted, eventually, in flying visits to each other's houses—the house in Camberwell, and Miss Eveleigh's residence at New Cross.
Harriet, during the last week or two, had been spending her time at New Cross with the Eveleighs, much to the desolateness of the Camberwell domicile, and the dulness of Master Sidney Hinchford. But the visit was at an end on the morning of the day alluded to in our last chapter, and had it not been for his father's excitability, Sidney, who had mapped his plans out, would have abandoned the backgammon board and a-wooing gone.
It was as well that he did not, for Harriet Wesden at half-past seven in the evening entered the stationer's shop, and surprised Mattie by her late visit.
"Good gracious!" was Mattie's truly feminine ejaculation, "who would have thought of seeing you to-night? How well you are looking—how glad I am that you have come back—what a colour you have got!"