Christian accepted the assurance in a dazed way, and after he had silently shaken the other’s hand, began walking on again, studying the ground with a troubled frown. “I am a weak and dull fool!” he growled at last, in rage at himself. “I have not sense enough to behave properly! It is a mistake that I should he put over anybody else! I make myself ridiculous, like any parvenu.”
“No—that’s all rot,” the other felt it judicious to urge. “You’re perfectly all right, only—only——”
“Only I’m not!” Christian filled in the gap of hesitation with an angry laugh.
Gradually a calmer view of himself pervaded his mind. “It is more difficult than you think, Dicky,” he affirmed, after a pause. “It is not easy at all—at first—to—what shall I say?—to keep feeling your feet under you on the solid ground. The temptation to soar, to think you are lifted up, is upon you every minute. It catches you unawares. Ah! I see one must watch that without ceasing. Oh, I am glad—more glad than I can tell you—that you stopped me. Ah! that was a true friend’s service.”
Dicky chuckled softly: “It’s much nicer, if you can take it that way,” he admitted.
“If I am ever anything but nice to yoo,” Christian began, gravely, and then stopped as if he had bitten his tongue. “Oh, there is patronage again!” he cried with vexation—and then let himself be persuaded to join in the frank laughter that the other set up.
“Oh, we shall hit it off all right,” Dicky assured him as a final word on the subject. “It’s merely a question of time. You’ve got to get accustomed to your new job, and I to mine: that’s all there is of it. We shall learn the whole bag of tricks in a week or so, and be happy ever afterward.”
The joking refrain struck some welcome chord in Christian’s thoughts. He looked up, and noted that they were very near the door leading out from the fruit-garden to the heath beyond the wall. Halting, he smiled into his companion’s face.
“No one will follow me now,” he said with sparkling eyes. “I will let you turn back here, if you don’t mind.”