“Sympathy, Fred?”
“Ay, sympathy. When a man is in distress he naturally craves for sympathy, and he turns, also naturally, to those who can and will give it—not to everybody, John Barret—only to those who can feel with him as well as for him. I am in distress, John, and ever since you and I fought our first and last battle at Eton, I have found you a true sympathiser. So now, is your heart ready to receive the flood of my sorrows?”
Young Auberly said the latter part of this in a half-jesting tone, but he was evidently in earnest, so his friend replied by squeezing his hand warmly, and saying, “Let’s hear about it, Fred,” while he re-lighted his pipe.
“You have but a poor lodging here, John,” said Auberly, looking round the room.
Barret turned on his friend a quick look of surprise, and then said, with a smile:
“Well, I admit that it is not quite equal to a certain mansion in Beverly Square that I wot of, but it’s good enough for a poor clerk in an insurance office.”
“You are right,” continued Auberly; “it is not equal to that mansion, whose upper floors are at this moment a chevaux-de-frise of charcoal beams and rafters depicted on a dark sky, and whose lower floors are a fantastic compound of burned bricks and lime, broken boards, and blackened furniture.”
“You don’t mean to say there’s been a fire?” exclaimed Barret.
“And you don’t mean to tell me, do you, that a clerk in a fire insurance office does not know it?”
“I have been ill for two days,” returned Barret, “and have not seen the papers; but I’m very sorry to hear of it; indeed I am. The house is insured, of course?”