‘Nothing would be more agreeable to me, my dear fellow, but how am I to excuse my absence from chambers?’
‘Then I’ll come to your chambers instead of your coming to me; I shall thus have the opportunity of seeing how your muse has progressed; we will compare notes together. To be sure, it is not as if you had your room to yourself; there’s that disagreeable fellow-clerk of yours, a most unappreciative and flippant person.’
‘Yes, he would spoil everything,’ put in William Henry eagerly. ‘It is better we should be alone together, even for a less time, at the “Blue Boar.”’
‘Very good; then give me as long as you can to-morrow. I want your advice, for the fact is, the business on which I am come up to town is about the publication of my poems. The publisher and I cannot agree about terms, which seems strange, since what we both want is money down. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind my selecting a few of your very best—you and I could rig out a twin volume together, like Beaumont and Fletcher.’
‘Perhaps,’ observed William Henry dubiously.
He had private and pressing reasons for conciliating Mr. Reginald Talbot, but to such a monstrous proposition as had just been made to him he felt he could never consent. It would be like yoking his Pegasus to a dray horse. As regarded other matters, it was true that Talbot and he were old friends—or rather it would be more correct to say that they had for years of boyhood been thrown into one another’s company; the bond of school-friendship is, however, soon weakened under the influence of other conditions, as hothouse flowers fade and fail in the open air; and moreover, when angered, Talbot, who piqued himself on his knowledge of human nature, had a habit of saying what he thought of his antagonist, which was not the less intolerable if it happened to be correct. Their tastes, it was true, were similar, but involved some rivalry, and each perhaps was secretly conscious that the other did not admire his verses so much as he pretended to do. With the Irish Channel between them, they would doubtless have continued to get on capitally together, but, as intimates, the path of friendship had pitfalls. It must be added that Mr. Reginald Talbot’s arrival in town had taken place at a most inconvenient season, and was, in a word, unwelcome to his former crony. That this was not perceived by Talbot was not so much owing to the other’s tact as to his own conceit, which was stupendous; but fortunately it was not seen. Perhaps our young friend did not quite believe in the Irish gentleman’s sympathy with him in respect to Margaret, and misdoubted his ‘Spy-glass;’ perhaps he thought him, if not too wise, too cunning by half. At all events he greatly regretted that his brother bard had just now come to London, and especially about the remunerative production of his poems, which he had reason to believe would be a protracted operation.
The next afternoon, when he paid his promised visit to the ‘Blue Boar,’ a circumstance occurred which caused him increased annoyance.
‘I say, my astute young friend,’ were Talbot’s first words, delivered in that half morose, half bantering way which was habitual to him when ready primed for a quarrel, ‘where have you been to these last three hours?’
‘To the Temple. Did I not tell you that I generally went there in the afternoon? As to the exact locality, you must perceive the impropriety of my mentioning it even to you.’
‘Still you might speak the truth about other matters. Why did you not tell me that old Bingley had dismissed his second clerk?’