So I went down to the office and told Jem Fisher and little Neddy, that I had made up my mind to go and see my old friend Joe, in Berkshire, before they had had time to get their office coats on.
“What? that jolly fellow with the brown face and red whiskers,” said Jem, “who came up and slept in your room last Christmas cattle-show, and wanted to fight the cabman for a gallon of beer, who charged him half-a-crown from Baker Street to Gray’s Inn Lane?”
“Yes,” said I, “that’s the man.”
“I remember him well,” said Neddy; “and I’m sure you’ll have a good time of it if you go to see him. But, I say, how about supper to-night? You won’t want us and the Bradshaws any more, eh?”
“Oh, he isn’t going to get out of it like that,” said Jem, as he settled to his desk, and got his work out. “I say, Dick, you’re not going to be off now, are you? I know better.”
“I never was on that I know of,” said I; “however, I don’t mind standing supper at the Cheshire Cheese; but I won’t have you fellows up in my room again to-night, kicking up a row on the stairs. No! just catch me at it!”
So I gave them a supper that night, and another the night after I came back from my holiday.
They seemed just the same, but how different I felt. Only two short weeks had passed, but I was as much changed as if it had been ten years. I had found something which I never could get rid of, day or night, and which kept me always in a fret and a struggle. What a life I led with it! Sometimes it cast me down and made me ready to hang myself; and then, again, it would lift me up, and seem to fill me with warmth and sunshine. But, somehow, even when I was at the worst, if an enchanter had come and offered to wipe it all out, and to put me back just where I was the night before my holiday, I should have said “No;” and at all other times I felt that it was the most precious part of my life. What was it? Ah, what was it? Some of you will smile, and some of you will sneer, when you find out, as you will (if you don’t skip) before you get to the end of my story. And I can’t see the least reason why I should help you to it a minute sooner.