On my return to Beadle Square that evening I found a letter waiting for me, and to my joy and surprise it was in Jack Smith’s own handwriting. It said:
“Dear Fred,—You’ll be glad to hear I’m off the sick list at last, and have been turned out a perfect cure. Mrs Shield, my sister’s nurse and friend, insists on my taking it easy another week, and then I shall come up to town, and mean to work like a nigger to make up for lost time. I’ll tell you all the news when I come. I’m afraid you’ve been having a slow time.—Yours ever, Jack.
“P.S.—I’ve written to M., B., and Company, to tell them I’ll be up on Monday next.”
It seemed almost too good to be true that I should so soon see my friend again. Ah! how different it would all be when he came back! For the next week I could think of nothing else. What a lot I should have to tell him! How he would laugh over my adventures and misfortunes, and how he would scold me for my extravagances and follies! Well, these would be over at last, that was a comfort.
So, during the week, in view of giving up my extravagances, I bought a new suit of ready-made clothes that only half fitted me, and went on the Saturday afternoon with Whipcord and the Twins to see a steeplechase, where I was tempted to put two half-crowns, which I borrowed from the Twins, into a sweepstake, and lost them both. This was a good finish up to my little “fling” and no mistake; so much so that I began to think it was a pity Jack had not come last Monday instead of next.
“He would have kept me out of all this mischief,” said I to myself. Ah! I had yet to learn that if one wants to keep out of mischief one must not depend altogether upon one’s friends, or even oneself, for the blessing. Strength must be sought from a higher Power and a better Friend!
At last the long-looked-for Monday arrived, and I went down to the station in the evening to meet Jack’s train.
I could scarcely have said what feeling it was which prompted me to wear, not my new stripe suit, but my old clothes, shabby as they were, or why, instead of wearing my coloured Oxford-shirt, I preferred to array myself in one of the old flannel shirts with its time-honoured paper collar.
Somehow I had no ambition to “make an impression” on my friend Smith.
There was his head out of the window and his hand waving long before the train pulled up. The face was the same I had always known, pale and solemn, with its big black eyes and clusters of black hair. His illness had left neither mark nor change on him; still less had it altered his tone and manner, as he sprang from the carriage and seizing me by the arm, said, “Well, old fellow, here we are again, at last!”