“No; but a fellow I know, called Flanagan, was, and—”
“Do you know Flanagan?” I exclaimed; “he’s the very fellow I’ve been trying to find out. I would like to see him again.”
“Yes, he lives near us. I say, suppose you come up to the Field-Marshal and me on Tuesday; we live together, you know. We’ll have Flanagan and a fellow or two in.”
I gladly accepted this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs Nash’s feeling myself a good deal more a “man of the world,” and a good deal less of a hero, than I had left it that morning.
Chapter Fifteen.
How I got rather the Worst of it in a Certain Encounter.
My evening at Doubleday’s lodgings was the first of a course of small dissipations which, however pleasant while they lasted, did not altogether tend to my profit.
Of course, I had no intention of going in for that sort of thing regularly; but, I thought, while Jack Smith was away for a few days, there would be no harm in relieving the dulness of my life at Beadle Square by occasionally accepting the hospitality of such decent, good-natured fellows as Doubleday and his friends. There was nothing wrong, surely, in one fellow going and having supper with another fellow now and then! How easy the process, when one wishes to deceive oneself!