“But you should not have been so ready to accept a stranger’s invitation for me.”
“Pooh! he isn’t a stranger. He’ll be grateful to you for going. Big family the Selbys, and he’ll be very rich some day. Wonderful how fond he is, though, of feeding the ducks.”
“Yes, he seems to be,” said Frank; and he accompanied his companion as the latter strolled on now along the bank after finishing the distribution of bread to the feathered fowl by sending nearly a whole biscuit skimming and making ducks and drakes on the surface of the water; but the living ducks and drakes soon ended that performance and followed the pair in vain. For Andrew Forbes had suddenly become very thoughtful; while his companion also had his fit of musing, which ended in his saying to himself:
“I wish I was as clever as they are. It almost seemed as if they meant something more than they said. It comes from living in London I suppose, and perhaps some day I shall get to be as sharp and quick as they are. Perhaps, though, it is all nonsense, and they meant nothing. But I wish Drew had not said we’d go. I’m not a man, and what do I want at a club? I don’t know anything that they’d want to know, living as I do shut up in the Palace.” But there Frank Gowan was wrong, for what went on at Saint James’s Palace in the early days of the eighteenth century was of a great deal of interest to some people outside, and he never forgot the feeding of the ducks.
Chapter Seven.
How Frank Gowan grew one Year older in one Day.
“I Seem to have so many things to worry me,” thought Frank. “Any one would think that in a place like this without lessons or studies there would be no unpleasantries; but as soon as I’ve got the better of one, another comes to worry me.”
This was in consequence of the invitation for the following Monday. His mind was pretty well at ease about his confidential talk with his father; but he was nervous and uncomfortable about the visit to the club, and several times over he was on the point of getting leave to go across to Sir Robert to ask his opinion as to whether he ought to go.