"And you are getting on well, Arthur?
"Very. My salary is handsome; and I believe the business, or part of it, will be mine some day. We had better take a cab, Roland. I'll get rid of Gerald's parcel first. This small one is for Hamish. Stay a moment, though."
He wrote down the name of a private hotel in the Strand, where he intended to stay, requesting that the portmanteau should be sent there on its arrival.
Jumping into a hansom, Roland, who had not recovered his head, gave the address of Gerald's chambers. As they were beginning to spin along the lighted streets, however, he impulsively arrested the man, without warning to Arthur, and substituted Mrs. Gerald Yorke's lodgings. They were close at hand; but that was not his motive.
"If we leave the grapes at the chambers, Ger will only entertain his cronies with them--a lot of fast men like himself," explained Roland. "By taking them to Winny's, those poor meek little mites may stand a chance of getting a few. I don't believe they'd ever taste anything good at all but for Mrs. Hamish Channing."
Arthur Channing did not understand. Roland enlightened him. Gerald kept up, as might be said, two establishments: chambers for himself and lodgings for his wife.
"But that must be expensive," observed Arthur.
"Of course it is. Ger goes in for expense and fashion. All well and good if he can do it--and keep it up. I think he has had a windfall from some quarter, for he is launching out uncommonly just now. It can't be from work; he has been taking his ease all the autumn in Tom Fuller's yacht."
"I don't quite understand, yet, Roland. Do you mean that Gerald does not live with his wife and children?"
"He lives with them after a fashion: gives them one-third of his days and nights, and gives his chambers the other two. You'd hardly recognize him now, he is so grand and stilted up. He'd not nod to me in the street."