‘Wonder who he is?’ said Frank, laughing over the sudden friendliness this stranger had exhibited. ‘Anyway, I hope he’ll make his solicitors send me that brief.’
However, no brief came; but for the next few days Frank Abbot was always tumbling across Mr John Jones. He met him in the street as he went to and from his chambers. Mr Jones always stopped him, shook hands, and as often as not, turned and walked beside him. Frank began to like the man. He was very amusing, and seemed to know every country under the sun. Indeed, he declared he was a greater stranger to London than to any other capital. He was a great smoker; and as soon as he found that Frank did not object to the smell of good tobacco in his chambers, scarcely a day went by without his paying him a visit and having a long chat over a cigar. Frank was bound to think that Mr John Jones had taken a great liking to him. Perhaps, the man wanted a friend. As he said, he knew no one in London, and no one knew him.
So young Abbot drifted into intimacy with this lonely man, and soon quite looked forward to the sound of his cheerful voice and the fragrance of those particularly good cigars he smoked. He even, at Mr Jones’ urgent request, ran down to the seaside for a couple of days with him, and found the time pass very pleasantly in his society.
Although the young man was very reticent on the subject of his family’s misfortune, Mr Jones had somehow arrived at the conclusion that he was not rolling in wealth. He made no secret of the fact that he himself was absurdly rich. ‘I say, Abbot,’ he remarked one day, ‘if you want any money to push yourself up with, let me know.’ Perhaps Mr Jones fancied that judgeships were to be bought.
‘I don’t want any,’ said Frank shortly.
‘Don’t take offence. I said, if you do. Your pride—the worst part of you. It’s very hard a man can only help a fellow like you by dying and leaving him money. I don’t want to die just yet.’
Frank laughed. ‘I want no money left me. I shouldn’t take yours if you left it to me.’
‘Well, you’ll have to some day, you see.’ Then Mr John Jones lit another cigar from the stump of the old one, and went his way; leaving Frank more puzzled than ever with his new friend.
But the next day an event occurred which drove Mr John Jones, money, and everything save one thing, out of his head: Millicent Keene was in England—in London!
When he saw her letter lying on his table, Frank Abbot feared it could not be real. It would fade away like a fairy bank-note. No; before him lay a few lines in her handwriting: ‘My dear Frank—I have returned at last. I am at No. 4 Caxton Place.—Yours, Millicent Keene.’