"It's a wearisome story, Arundel," he said. "I don't know why I should bore you with it."
"But you don't bore me with it," cried the boy energetically. "I'm awfully interested in it, you know; and I could walk up and down here all day talking about it."
The two gentlemen had passed the Surrey toll–gate of Waterloo Bridge by this time. The South–Western Terminus had not been built in the year '38, and the bridge was about the quietest thoroughfare any two companions confidentially inclined could have chosen. The shareholders knew this, to their cost.
Perhaps Mr. Marchmont might have been beguiled into repeating the old story, which he had told so often in the dim firelight to his little girl; but the great clock of St. Paul's boomed forth the twelve ponderous strokes that told the hour of noon, and a hundred other steeples upon either side of the water made themselves clamorous with the same announcement.
"I must leave you, Arundel," the supernumerary said hurriedly; he had just remembered that it was time for him to go and be browbeaten by a truculent stage–manager. "God bless you, my dear boy! It was very good of you to want to see me, and the sight of your fresh face has made me very happy. I should like you to understand all about the Lincolnshire property. God knows there's small chance of its ever coming to me or to my child; but when I am dead and gone, Mary will be left alone in the world, and it would be some comfort to me to know that she was not without one friend––generous and disinterested like you, Arundel,––who, if the chance did come, would see her righted."
"And so I would," cried the boy eagerly. His face flushed, and his eyes fired. He was a preux chevalier already, in thought, going forth to do battle for a hazel–eyed mistress.
"I'll write the story, Arundel," John Marchmont said; "I've no time to tell it, and you mightn't remember it either. Once more, good–bye; once more, God bless you!"
"Stop!" exclaimed Edward Arundel, flushing a deeper red than before,––he had a very boyish habit of blushing,––"stop, dear old boy. You must borrow this of me, please. I've lots of them. I should only spend it on all sorts of bilious things; or stop out late and get tipsy. You shall pay me with interest when you get Marchmont Towers. I shall come and see you again soon. Good–bye."
The lad forced some crumpled scrap of paper into his old tutor's hand, bolted through the toll–bar, and jumped into a cabriolet, whose high–stepping charger was dawdling along Lancaster Place.
The supernumerary hurried on to Drury Lane as fast as his weak legs could carry him. He was obliged to wait for a pause in the rehearsal before he could find an opportunity of looking at the parting gift which his old pupil had forced upon him. It was a crumpled and rather dirty five–pound note, wrapped round two half–crowns, a shilling, and half–a–sovereign.