"You have grown quite a bear, Robert! That's what work's doing for you."
He laughed pleasantly. "I think it is hurry that is doing it for me this morning, I feel as if I had no time for anything. Number fifteen. Here we are!"
It was a commodious house, this one in Bloomsbury, steps leading up to the entrance. He sent in his card, "Mr. Robert Hunter," and they were admitted.
"Lawk a' mercy! Is it you?" exclaimed Mrs. Macpherson, looking first at the card and then at its owner, as they were shown into a handsome room, and the professor's lady, in sky-blue silk, and a scarlet Garibaldi body elaborately braided with black, advanced to receive them. She did not wear the bird-of-paradise feather, but she wore something equivalent to it: some people might call it a cap and some a turban, the front ornament of which, perching on the forehead, was an artificial bird, with shining wings of green and gold.
Mrs. Macpherson took a hand of each, shaking them heartily. "And so you have put away your name?" she said.
"Strictly speaking, it never was my name," he answered. "It was my wife's. I had to assume it with her property, but when the property left me again, I thought it time to drop the name."
The professor came forward in his threadbare coat, with (it must be owned) a great stream of some sticky red liquid down the front of it, for they had fetched him from his experimenting laboratory. But his smile was bright, his welcome genial. Mrs. Macpherson, whose first thoughts were always of hospitality, ordered luncheon to be got ready. Robert Hunter, sitting down between them, quietly told them he had become a working man again, and where he was going, and what to do. Mrs. Macpherson heard him with a world of sympathy.
"It's just one o' them crosses in life that come to a many of us," remarked she. "Play first and work afterwards! it's out o' the order of things. But take heart. You've got your youth yet, and you'll grow reconciled."
"If you only knew how glad I am to be at work again!" he said, a faint light of earnestness crossing his face. "My years of idleness follow me as a reproach--as a waste of life."
"But for steady attention to my work and studies, I should never have been able to contribute my poor mite to further the cause of science," said the professor, meekly, speaking it as an encouragement to Robert Hunter.