“Good-bye,” said he, coming to my desk; “I’ll send you a line;” and without another word to any one he was gone.
“He’s a cool fish, that friend of yours!” said Doubleday, that afternoon to me. “He seems to get on pretty much as he likes.”
“He’s awfully cut up about his sister,” I said. “Poor Jack!”
“No harm in that!” said Doubleday, condescendingly. “I thought he was quite right to walk into that cad Wallop myself. But he’ll find it rather hot for him when he gets back, I fancy. When’s he coming back?”
“In a day or two, I suppose,” said I.
“And you’ll be mighty disconsolate, I suppose,” said Doubleday, “till he returns? What do you say to coming up to my lodgings to-night, eh, young ’un, to see me?”
I felt very grateful for this unlooked-for honour, and said I would be delighted to come.
“All serene! I’ve asked one or two of the fellows up, so we’ll have a jolly evening. By the way, when you go out get me a couple of boxes of sardines, will you, and a dozen twopenny cigars?”
I executed these commissions, and in due time, business being ended, Doubleday and I and Crow, and the sardines and the cigars, started in a body for Cork Place, where, in a first-floor front, the estimable Mr Doubleday was wont to pitch his daily tent.
They were cosy quarters, and contrasted in a marked manner with Beadle Square. Doubleday knew how to make himself comfortable, evidently. There were one or two good prints on his walls, a cheerful fire in the hearth, a sofa and an easy-chair, and quite an array of pickle-jars and beer-bottles and jam-pots in his cupboard. And, to my thinking, who had been used to the plain, unappetising fare of Mrs Nash, the spread on his table was simply sumptuous.