I thanked him, and explained that I was staying at Linbeach for the sea-air, and that I must be in town in a few days.
"I'm sorry for that. We ought to have found you out sooner; but I only chanced to see your name at the library last Friday. And so you are at Merton?"
"Yes, I'm at Merton," said I, feeling it quite refreshing to speak the truth.
"Ah, I'm glad your father's stuck to the old college; you could not be at a better one. That boy of mine is wild for soldiering, or I should have sent him there."
The mystery stood revealed. I had recorded my name on the visitors' board as H. Olifant, Merton College, Oxford; and by a strange coincidence, Sir Philip's former friend had belonged to the same college, and owned the same initial. The coincidence was indeed so complete, that it had evidently never dawned upon the baronet that I could be other than the son of his old chum. He sat now sipping his wine, with almost a sad expression on his honest face.
"Ah, my lad," he said presently, "when you come to my age, you'll look back to your old college and your old friends as I do now. But what was I going to ask you? Oh, I remember. Have you seen any of the Fordes lately?"
I glanced round despairingly at the geologists, but they were lost to everything except blue lias and old red sandstone, and there was no hope of effecting a diversion in that quarter.
"Well, no—not very lately," I responded slowly, as though trying to recall the exact date when I last had that felicity. "To tell the truth, I don't go down into those parts so often as I ought to do."
"There's a family for you!" Sir Philip went on triumphantly; "how well they are doing. That young George Forde will distinguish himself one of these days, or I'm much mistaken; and Willie, too—do you know [{541}] whether he has passed for Woolwich yet?"
I could not say that I did, but the good baronet's confidence in Forde genius was as satisfactory as certainty.