“I promised to come with you because I thought there would be only us two; but I really can’t come if there are more.”
“My dear fellow,” said Jim good-humouredly, “anyone else would be offended with you. Why, you’re a regular bear.”
“I know it’s very rude of me,” said George, feeling and looking very uncomfortable, “and I don’t want to be that.”
“Of course you don’t; so come along. Why, my dear fellow, one would think my friends were all as abandoned wretches as I am, by the manner in which you shrink from the notion of meeting them, but they aren’t.”
“Do let me off,” put in George, in despair.
“Not a bit of it. But I tell you what, if you don’t like them or me—”
“It’s not that, you know, but I’ve no right to associ—”
“Associate with your grandmother! Come this once, and I’ll never ask you again unless you like, there!”
“Who are the fellows?” asked George.
“Two of them are College men—very nice men, in my humble opinion; and, now I come to think of it, one of them, Clarke, is in against you for the ‘Wigram,’ but everyone says you’re safe; and the third is an old particular school chum, who is playing in Sandhurst team against us, and whom it is therefore my interest to incapacitate by a howling breakfast.”