What a happy evening that was! We walked to Beadle Square, carrying Jack’s bag between us, and talking all the way. The dull old place appeared quite bright now he was back; and the meal we had together in the parlour that evening before the other fellows came home seemed positively sumptuous, although it consisted only of weak tea and bread-and-butter.
Then we turned out for a long walk, anywhere, and having no bag to catch hold of this time, we caught hold of one another’s arms, which was quite as comfortable.
“Well, old man,” began Jack, “what have you been up to all the time? You never told me in your letters.”
“There wasn’t much to tell,” I said. “It was awfully slow when you left, I can assure you.”
“But you soon got over that?” said Jack, laughing.
He wasn’t far wrong, as the reader knows, but somehow I would have preferred him to believe otherwise. I replied, “There would have been simply nothing to do of an evening if Doubleday—who is a very decent fellow at bottom, Jack—hadn’t asked me up to his lodgings once or twice to supper.”
I said this in as off-hand a way as I could. I don’t know why I had fancied Jack would not be pleased with the intelligence, for Doubleday had never been very friendly to him.
“Did he?” said Jack. “That was rather brickish of him.”
“Yes; he knew it would be dull while you were away, and I was very glad to go.”
“Rather! I expect he gave you rather better suppers than we get up at Beadle Square, eh?”