So intent was he upon his own bitter, despairing thoughts, he failed to notice the two young men who had stopped short at sight of him, astonishment and delight depicted on their faces. He would have passed them by unheeded, they both saw, and with one accord, each sprang forward, laying a detaining hand on his shoulders, which brought him to an unceremonious standstill.
“John Dinsmore, and in the flesh, by all that is wonderful!” they cried, simultaneously.
With an exclamation of joy Dinsmore drew back and looked into the faces of his two devoted friends, Jerry Gaines and Ballou, the artist. And John was certainly as much overjoyed to see them as they were to once more behold him.
“I almost imagine I shall wake up on the morrow and find this encounter but a wild delusion of the overwrought brain, as you novelists put it,” laughed Gaines, with tears in his blue eyes as he still continued to wring John’s hand, “but come into this restaurant around the corner, and we will have a rousing reunion, and you shall tell us what you have been doing with yourself, and why you allowed your tried and true old friends to spend so much grief over you, mourning you as dead.”
“Yes,” said Ballou; “you must come, John; it is not possible that you are contemplating refusing Jerry’s request. We must get somewhere out of the teeth of this howling storm. I don’t possess fur-lined garments, consequently it is going through me like a knife. Are you with us?”
“As you will, boys,” replied John Dinsmore, and they proceeded at once to the place designated, a restaurant where the “Trinity” had been in the habit of dining in the past, and where Gaines and Ballou still came to get the most for their spare change.
“It is my turn to pay the bill to-night,” said John, the first smile that his face had known for months lighting up his grave face. “You remember the day I left New York last—it would have been my turn to put up for the spread.”
“Not so, my boy,” laughed Gaines. “I have had a streak of luck to-day, and I insist upon paying the bill. If you feel so very liberal, you shall do the pretty act to-morrow night.”
It was during the meal that John Dinsmore recounted to his two old friends all that had taken place since the memorable day they packed his valise for him, and sent him South, from Newport, with the double object of regaining his health and looking at the little Louisiana heiress at Blackheath Hall.
“Why, your meeting the little Jess, after all, and marrying her out of hand, without going near Blackheath Hall, and she not dreaming of your real identity, sounds like a chapter from a novel. By George! what a capital story it would make!”