A buzz of voices issued from a partly opened door on the first floor, and Andrew walked straight in without hesitation, Frank finding himself in the presence of about twenty gentlemen, standing at one end of a long room, along whose sides were arranged small tables laid for dinner.
The conversation stopped on the instant, and every eye was turned toward the new-comers, who doffed their hats with the customary formal bows, when, to the great relief of Frank, one gentleman detached himself from the group and came to meet them.
“How are you, Mr Selby?” said Andrew loudly.
“The happier for seeing you keep your engagement,” said their friend the feeder of ducks, smiling. “Mr Gowan, I am delighted to find my prayer has not been vain. Let me introduce you to our friends here of the club. We look upon this as a home, where we are all perfectly at our ease; and we wish our visitors—our neophytes—to feel the same. Gentlemen, let me introduce my guest, Mr Frank Gowan. I think some of you have heard his father’s—Sir Robert Gowan’s—name.”
There was a warm murmur of assent, and to a man the party assembled pressed forward to bid the visitors welcome. So pleasantly warm was the reception given to him, and so genuine the efforts made to set him at his ease, that the lad’s feeling of diffidence and confusion soon began to pass away, and with it the feeling of uneasiness; for the boy felt that these gentlemen could not have been of the party engaged in the riot, and he had nearly persuaded himself that, as this was evidently a public tavern, quite another class of people had occupied the room on his previous visit to the place, only he could not make this explanation fit with Andrew’s excitement and desire to join in the fight.
But he had little time for thought. His bland and pleasant-spoken host took up too much of his attention, chatting fluently about the most matter-of-fact occurrences, political business being entirely excluded, and cleverly drawing the lads out in turn to talk about themselves and their aspirations, so ably, indeed, that before the agreeable little dinner served to these three at a table close to the window was half over, Frank found that he was relating some of his country life and school adventures to his host, and that the gentlemen at the tables on either side were listening.
The knowledge that he was being overheard acted as an extinguisher to the light of the boy’s oratory, and he stopped short.
“Well?” said his host, with a pleasant smile; while Andrew leaned back, apparently quite satisfied with the impression his companion was making. “Pray go on. You drew the great trout close to the river-bank. Don’t say you lost it after all.”
“Oh no, I caught it,” said Frank, colouring; “but I am talking too much.”
“My dear boy,” said Mr Selby, “believe me, your fresh, young experiences are delightful to us weary men of the town. Cannot you feel how they revive our recollections of our own boyish days? There, pray don’t think we are tired of anecdotes like this. Forbes here used to be fond of the country; but he has grown such a lover of town life and the court that he hardly mentions it now.”