Scene: The deck of the Fairy Queen. Douglas and Leonard walking slowly up and down the quarter-deck arm-in-arm. Hardly a cloud in the sky, stars very bright, and a round moon rising in the east and gilding the waters.
Three years have elapsed since the conversation related in the last chapter took place—years that have not been thrown away, for our heroes—by that title we ought now to know them—have been sensible and apt pupils in the world’s great school.
It must be admitted that it was both a strange and an unusual thing for two fathers, to each make his only son an allowance, and tell him to go and enjoy himself in any way he pleased. After all, it was only treating boys as men, and this, in my opinion, ought to be done more often than it is.
They drew their first half-year’s income in London, then went quietly away to their hotel to consider what they should do.
“A couple of hundred a year, Doug,” said Leonard, “isn’t a vast fortune.”
“No,” replied Douglas, “it isn’t unspendable.”
“That is what I was thinking. But you see, by making us this grant—and it is all they can afford, and very handsome of them—we are positively on parole, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are bound not to exceed. To do so would be most unkind and ungentlemanly.”
“Well, if we go on the continent it won’t last long, will it?”