“Oh no; but it does very well. I say, I wish we might fish.”
“Oh, we’ll go fishing some day. Walk faster; we’re late.”
“Fast as you like. What do you say to a run? You can run, you say, when you like.”
“Oh no, we needn’t run; only walk fast.”
“Or the ducks will be impatient,” said Frank, laughing.
“Yes, or the ducks may be impatient,” said Andrew to himself, as he led on toward the end of the ornamental water nearest to where Buckingham Palace now stands, and bore off to the left; and when some distance back along the farther shore of the lake and nearly opposite to Saint James’s Palace, he said suddenly:
“Look, Frank, there is some one beforehand;” and he pointed to where a gentleman stood by the edge of the water shooting bits of biscuit with his thumb and finger some distance out, apparently for the sake of seeing the ducks race after them, some aiding themselves with their wings, and then paddling back for more.
The two lads walked up to where the gentleman was standing, and as he heard them approach he turned quickly, and Frank saw that he was a pale, slight, thin-faced, youngish-looking man who might be forty.
“Ah, Andrew,” he said, “you here; how are you? You have not come to feed the ducks?”
“Oh yes, I have,” said Andrew, giving the stranger a peculiar look; “and I’ve brought a friend with me. Let me introduce him. Mr Frank Gowan, Captain Sir Robert Gowan’s son, and my fellow-servant with his Royal Highness. Frank, this happens to be a friend of mine—Mr George Selby.”