"Oh, then you have got some friends? So had I when I was your age. They go somehow when you get old. Your father was the last of them, I think. But you're not much like him, except a little in face. True, he was a Radical, but you,—well, I don't know what you are. If you'd been a son of mine, I'd have had you in Parliament by now, somehow or other."
"I think you never had a son?" said Waymark, observing the note of melancholy which every now and then came up in the old man's talk.
"No."
"But you had some children, I think?"
"Yes, yes,—they're dead."
He had walked to the window, and suddenly turned round with a kind of impatience.
"Never mind the friend to-day; come and have some dinner with me. I seem to want a bit of company."
This was the first invitation of the kind Waymark had received. He accepted it, and they went out together.
"It's a pleasant part this," Mr. Woodstock said, as they walked by the river. "One might build himself a decent house somewhere about here, eh?"
"Do you think of doing so?"