“With you, perhaps, but not with me,” said Distin. “I am different. I’d have given anything to possess your frank, manly nature.”
“Oh, I say, spare my blushes, old chap,” cried Vane, laughing.
“Be serious a minute, Vane. It may be years before we meet again, but I must tell you now. You seem to have worked a change in me I can’t understand, and I want you to promise me this—that you will write to me. I know you can never think of me as a friend, but—”
“Why can’t I?” cried Vane, heartily. “I’ll show you. Write? I should think I will, and bore you about all my new weathercock schemes. Dis, old chap, I’m such a dreamer that I’ve no time to see what people about me are like, and I’ve never seen you for what you really are till now we’re going to say good-bye. I am glad you’ve talked to me like this.”
Something very like a sob rose in Distin’s throat as they stood, hand clasped in hand, but he was saved from breaking down.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the fly driver, “but we shan’t never catch that train.”
“Yes; half a sovereign for you, if you get me there,” cried Distin, snatching open the fly, and leaping in; “good-bye, old chap!” he cried as Vane banged the door and he gripped hands, as the latter ran beside the fly, “mind and write—soon—good-bye—good-bye.”
And Vane stood alone in the dusty road looking after the fly till it disappeared.
“Well!” he cried, “poor old Dis! Who’d have thought he was such a good fellow underneath all that sour crust. I am glad,” and again as he walked slowly and thoughtfully back:—“I am glad.”