The other man, after hesitating a moment, thrust his hand with great delight into that of his old friend, and instantly became as talkative and lively as a moment before he had been taciturn and depressed.
“Why, John, so it is,” he exclaimed, with a smile broadening on his plump and placid face, turning his head a little towards his companion, after the manner of those who are slightly deaf. “And glad am I to see you again, old chap, and looking so well too, and—and so prosperous,” and he gave a shy glance round him. “Do you know,” he went on, growing buoyantly confidential under the influence of his friend’s hearty grip of the hand, “that I thought you wanted to cut me? That you had grown too grand for your old friends.”
“No. When was that?” asked John Bradfield, shortly.
He was not a good actor, and Marrable looked at him doubtfully, as he answered:
“Why, out in the street just now, outside the station. I knew you in a moment, wrapt up as you were, and cutting such a dash, too. But then you were always a dashing fellow, even in the old days, John,” maundered on the unprosperous one, admiringly. “I called out to you, but you took no notice. And I said to myself, ‘Ah, he’s like all the rest of ’em; he knows his friends by their coats. He——’”
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” returned John Bradfield’s loud voice. “I never turned my back on an old friend yet, and I’m not going to begin now. Did you come down here to see me?”
“Yes,” answered the other, meekly. “Well, at least, the fact is I heard of you quite by chance, and of how you’d got on, and as I’m down in the world, and I remembered your good heart in the old days, John, I thought I’d just run down and have a peep at you, and then, if I wasn’t wanted, I could come away.”
Mr. Bradfield felt a sensation of relief; these words seemed to show him a way out of his difficulty. But the next moment he was undeceived.
“If you don’t want me here, John, I’ll just spend a few days in the town here; I daresay I can find lodgings good enough for me easily enough, and all I’ll trouble you for will be my fare back to town, which you’ll not begrudge me, for old acquaintance sake.”