"But how shall I pay the other half?"
"Oh, you must save from your allowance; it is a very liberal one; and the tradesmen are not pressing."
"No—but the cursed bill-brokers"—
"Always renew to a young man of your expectations. And if I get into an office, I can always help you, my dear Frank."
"Ah, Randal, I am not so bad as to take advantage of your friendship," said Frank warmly. "But it seems to me mean, after all, and a sort of a lie, indeed, disguising the real state of my affairs. I should not have listened to the idea from any one else. But you are such a sensible, kind, honorable fellow."
"After epithets so flattering, I shrink from the responsibility of advice. But apart from your own interests, I should be glad to save your father the pain he would feel at knowing the whole extent of the scrape you have got into. And if it entailed on you the necessity to lay by—and give up hazard, and not be security for other men—why it would be the best thing that could happen. Really, too, it seems hard on Mr. Hazeldean, that he should be the only sufferer, and quite just that you should bear half your own burdens."
"So it is, Randal; that did not strike me before. I will take your counsel; and now I will go at once to Limmer's. My dear father! I hope he is looking well?"
"Oh, very. Such a contrast to the sallow Londoners! But I think you had better not go till dinner. He has asked me to meet you at six. I will call for you a little before, and we can go together. This will prevent a great deal of gêne and constraint. Good-bye till then.—Ha!—by the way, I think if I were you, I would not take the matter too seriously and penitentially. You see the best of fathers like to keep their sons under their thumb, as the saying is. And if you want at your age to preserve your independence, and not be hurried off and buried in the country, like a school-boy in disgrace, a little manliness of bearing would not be amiss. You can think over it."
The dinner at Limmer's went off very differently from what it ought to have done. Randal's words had sunk deep, and rankled sorely in the Squire's mind; and that impression imparted a certain coldness to his manner which belied the hearty, forgiving, generous impulse with which he had come up to London, and which even Randal had not yet altogether whispered away. On the other hand, Frank, embarrassed both by the sense of disingenuousness, and a desire "not to take the thing too seriously," seemed to the Squire ungracious and thankless.
After dinner, the Squire began to hum and haw, and Frank to color up and shrink. Both felt discomposed by the presence of a third person; till, with an art and address worthy of a better cause, Randal himself broke the ice, and so contrived to remove the restraint he had before imposed, that at length each was heartily glad to have matters made clear and brief by his dexterity and tact.