He went into the study, where Michael and the doctor kept their professional library, and where odd volumes of Roger’s had got mixed up with treatises on medicine and surgery. He picked up a volume at haphazard, and gazed at the title of it. ‘Principles of Biology,’ it ran—‘Principles of Biology’—and though he believed he was trying to read it, he was really very busy thinking thoughts—thinking of Michael; wondering how far his father’s affairs were retrieved, and if at last there were some prospect of his happiness being accomplished.
‘Since he is so wrapped up in that insipid girl, and since she has not done him the kindness to throw him over before,’ Roger thought, in the pride of his own wisdom, ‘there’s no chance of it now, since his father’s death must make him more prosperous in a worldly point of view. She’ll have him, sure enough. They will be married, and he—will live to repent it.’
Insensibly, he let the book drop, and his thoughts turned to the days of long ago; to his comrades and their lives, and his life, and to their play in the Thorsgarth garden, in summer sunshine.
‘Queer, very queer,’ he reflected, ‘that we two, who were companions then, should be chums now. I wonder what Michael will turn out; how he will win his spurs; what will give him the stamp of finished manhood? for he’s a dreamer yet, though[though] he does not know it.’
Then he began to think that the doctor was long a-coming, and that if he did not appear soon, he, Roger, would have to eat his lunch alone, and be off to his work.
The door opened. The doctor’s parlour-maid stood there.
‘If you please, sir, they’ve sent from Mr. Langstroth’s. Mr. Michael begs you will step across at once.’
Roger sprang to his feet with a vague wonder and foreboding in his mind. He soon measured the distance between the doctor’s house and the Red Gables. He found the door open and a servant waiting.
‘This way, sir. They are in the library.’
In another moment Roger found himself in the well-known room, with the three familiar figures assembled there.