UNEXPECTED MEETINGS.
"You can go to your dinner, Mr. Yorke."
The clocks were striking one, as Brown, the manager, gave the semi-order. Roland, to whom dinner was an agreeable interlude, especially under the circumstances of having money in his pocket to pay for it, leaped off his stool forthwith, and caught up his hat.
"Are you not coming, Hurst?"
Mr. Hurst shook his head. "Little Jenner goes now. I stay until he comes back."
Little Jenner had been making preparation to go of his own accord, brushing his hat, drawing down his waistcoat, pushing gingerly in order his mass of soft fair hair. He was remarkably small; and these very small men are often very great dandies. Roland, who had shaken off the old pride in his rubs with the world, waited for him outside.
"Jenner, d'ye know of a good dining-place about here?" he asked, as they stood together, looking like a giant and a dwarf.
The clerk hesitated whether to say he did or did not. The place that he considered good might not appear so to the nephew of Sir Richard Yorke.
"I generally go to a house in Tottenham Court Road, sir. It's a kind of cook's shop, clean, and the meat excellent; but one sees all kinds of people there, and you may not think it up to you."
"Law, bless you!" cried Roland. "When a fellow has been knocked about for four years in the streets of Port Natal, he doesn't retain much ceremony. Let's get on to it. Do you know of any lodgings to be let in these parts, Jenner?" he continued again. "I shall get some as near to Greatorex's as I can. One does not want a three or four miles' dance night and morning."