Once more, for perhaps the five hundredth time, Bede glanced from his desk at Mr. Brown opposite. No longer need, though, was there to glance with any speculative view; that had been set at rest. The eyes that had so mystified Bede Greatorex, bringing to him an uneasy, puzzling feeling, which wholly refused to elucidate itself, tax his memory as he would, were at length rendered clear eyes to him. He knew where and on what occasion he had seen them: and if he had disliked and dreaded them before, he dreaded them ten times more now.
"Ah, how do you do, Mr. Channing?"
Bede, leaving his desk, had been crossing the office to his private room, when Hamish entered. They shook hands, and stood talking for a few minutes, not having met since Bede returned from his continental tour. Just as a change for the worse in Bede struck Mr. Butterby's keen eye, so, as it appeared, did some change in Hamish Channing strike Bede.
"Are you well?" he asked.
"As well as London and its hard work will let me be," replied Hamish, with one of his charming smiles, which really was gay and light, in spite of its tinge of sadness. "It is of no use to dream of green fields and blue waves when we cannot get to them, you know."
"That's rest--when you can sit down in the one and idly watch the other," remarked Bede. "But to go scampering about for a month or two at railroad speed, neither body nor eye getting holiday, wears out a man worse than working on in London, Mr. Channing."
With a slow, lingering gaze at Hamish's refined face, which was looking strangely worn, and, so to say, etherealised, Bede passed on to his room Hamish turned to the desk of Hurst and Roland Yorke.
"How are you?" he asked of them conjointly.
"As well as cantankerous circumstances and people will let me be," was the cross reply of Roland, without looking up from his writing.
Hamish laughed.