'Simms is a curious fellow,' Rorrison answered. 'Though you might not expect it, he has written some of the most pathetic things I ever read, but he wears his heart out of sight. Despite what he says, too, he is very jealous for the Press's good name. He seemed to take to you, so I should not wonder though he were to look you up here some night.'
'Here? How do you mean?'
'Why, this. I shall probably be away from London for some months, and as I must keep on my rooms, I don't see why you should not occupy them. The furniture is mine, and you would be rent free, except that the housekeeper expects a few shillings a week for looking after things. What do you think?'
Rob could have only one thought as he compared these comfortable chambers to his own bare room, and as Rorrison, who seemed to have taken a warm liking to him, pressed the point, arguing that as the rent must be paid at any rate the chambers were better occupied, he at last consented, on the understanding that they could come to some arrangement on Rorrison's return.
'It will please my father, too,' Rorrison added, 'to know that you are here. I always remember that had it not been for him you might never have gone on to the Press.'
They sat so late talking this matter over that Rob eventually stayed all night, Rorrison having in his bedroom a couch which many journalists had slept on.
Next morning the paper whose nickname is the Scalping Knife was served up with breakfast, and the first thing Rob saw in it was a leaderette about a disease generated in the palm of the hand by walking-sticks with heavy knobs for handles.
'I told you,' said Rorrison, 'that Simms would make his half-guinea out of you.'
When Rorrison went down to Simms's chambers later in the day, however, to say that he was leaving Rob tenant of his rooms, he was laughing at something else.
'All during breakfast,' he said to Simms, 'I noticed that Angus was preoccupied, and anxious to say something that he did not like to say. At last he blurted it out with a white face, and what do you think it was?'