“Afford your great-grandmother! Why, a fellow who can entertain the whole lot of us as you did can’t be so very hard up, can he, Wallop? So come, none of your gammon. You’re coming with us to-night, my boy, and old Bull’s-eye can sit and scowl at himself in the looking-glass if he likes.”
I went with them, glad enough to get anywhere out of Jack’s sight. We had a “rollicking evening,” as the fellows called it; which meant that after a noisy and extravagant tea at the Magpie we adjourned in a body to the performance, where we made quite as much noise as the rest of the audience put together, after which we finished up with a fish supper of Doubleday’s ordering, at a restaurant, the bill for which came to two shillings a head.
I was not in a condition to enjoy myself. The thought of Jack haunted me all the evening and made me miserable. I fancied him walking back from Hawk Street alone. He would stop to talk to Billy, I knew, and then he would go on to Beadle Square and bury himself in his book till bedtime. Would he ever think of me? Why, even the little shoeblack was more to him now than I was.
I got home late—so late that Mrs Nash protested angrily, and threatened to stand my irregularities no longer. Jack was not asleep when I entered the room, but at sight of me he turned over in his bed and drew the clothes round him. I was angry and miserable and made no attempt to speak to him. But I could not sleep. The spirit seemed to have gone out of my life in London, and I dreaded to-morrow as much as ever I had hated to-day.
I rose early in the morning, and after a hurried breakfast started from the house before Jack came down. At least I could take refuge in my work at the office.
I had the place to myself for quite half an hour, when Hawkesbury arrived.
“Well, Batchelor,” said he, “you are industrious. I thought I should be first to-day, but you are before me. Where’s your friend Smith?”
“I don’t know,” I said, hurriedly.
“I’m afraid,” said Hawkesbury, with his sweet smile, “you and Smith haven’t been getting on well lately. I noticed yesterday you never spoke to one another.”
“I’m not obliged to speak to him,” I growled.