I shook my head, and he went on, smiling grimly at me the while.
“No business to have left me, Grace. I should have made a man of you. Well, how are you getting on?”
“Capitally,” I said.
“Don’t believe it. Better have stopped with me. Heard from Peter?”
“No,” I said eagerly. “Have you?”
“Yes. Just the same as usual. Down at Rowford still, smoking himself to death. Hah! capital pinch of snuff this,” he added, regaling himself again. “Sent his love to you, and said I was to tell you—tell you—where the dickens did I put that letter?” he continued, pulling a bundle of dip-proofs out of his breast-pocket, and hunting them over—“said I was to tell you—ah, here it is—to tell you—Ah—‘Tell young Grace I shall come up to town and see him some day, and I’ll give you a look up too.’ Bah! Don’t want him: won’t have him. We should be sure to quarrel. He’d come here, and sit and smoke all day—where’s my—oh, here it is.”
He took a couple of pinches of snuff in a queer, excited way, and snapped his fingers loudly.
“I shall be very, very glad to see him when he does come,” I said warmly.
“Ah, yes, of course you will. He’s got some papers or something, he says, for you.”
“Has he?”