Consequently I felt particularly uncomfortable at the twin's offer, and at a loss how to respond to it; and before I could resolve the chance was gone.

"Now then," said Doubleday, "make up your fours there, but for goodness'

sake don't let both the patriarchs get at the same table! You with the paper and Crow, and Paddy and I--we'll have this table, and you other four take the other;" and before I knew where I was I found myself seated at a table, opposite Whipcord, with thirteen cards in my hand.

I did not know what to do. Had my partner been any one but Whipcord, with the straw in his mouth, I do believe I should have made a mild protest. Had Doubleday or Crow been one of our party, I might have screwed up my courage. But Whipcord had impressed me as a particularly knowing and important personage, and I felt quite abashed in his presence, and would not for anything have him think I considered anything that he did not correct.

"I'm afraid I don't know the way to play," said I, apologetically, when the game began.

"You don't!" said he. "Why, where were you at school? Never mind, you'll soon get into it."

This last prophecy was fulfilled. Somehow or other I picked up the game pretty quickly, and earned a great deal of applause from my partner by my play. Indeed, despite my being a new hand, our side won, and the Field-Marshal and Abel had to hand over sixpence after sixpence as the evening went on. The sight of the money renewed my discomforts; it was bad enough, so I felt, to play cards at all, but to play for money was a thing I had always regarded with a sort of horror. Alas! how easy it is, in the company of one's fancied superiors, to forget one's own poor scruples!

The game at our table came to rather an abrupt end, brought on by a difference of opinion between the Field-marshal and Mr Whipcord on some point connected with a deal. It was a slight matter, but in the sharp words that ensued my companions came out in a strangely new light.

Whipcord, especially, gave vent to language which utterly horrified me, and the Field-Marshal was not backward to reply in a similar strain.

How long this interchange of language might have gone on I cannot say, had not Doubleday opportunely interposed. "There you are, at it again, you two, just like a couple of bargees! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Look how you've shocked the young 'un there! You really shouldn't!"

I coloured up at this speech. From the bantering tone in which Doubleday spoke it seemed as if he half despised any one who was not used to the sound of profanity; and I began to be angry with myself for having looked so horrified.

The quarrel was soon made up with the help of some of the twopenny cigars, which were now produced along with the beer-bottles. By this time I had been sufficiently impressed by my company not to decline anything, and I partook of both of these luxuries--that is, I made believe to smoke a cigar, and kept a gla.s.s of beer in front of me, from which I took a very occasional sip.

My mind was thoroughly uncomfortable. I had known all along I was not a hero; but it had never occurred to me before that I was a coward. In the course of one short evening I had forsaken more than one old principle, merely because others did the same. I had joined in a laugh against my best friend, because I had not the courage to stand up for him behind his back, and I had tried to appear as if bad language and drinking and gambling were familiar things to me, because I dared not make a stand and confess I thought them loathsome.

We sat for a long time that night talking and cracking jokes, and telling stories. Many of the latter were clever and amusing, but others--those that raised the loudest laugh--were of a kind I had never heard before, and which I blush now to recall. Any one who had seen me would have supposed that talk like this was what I most relished. Had they but heard another voice within reproaching me, they might have pitied rather than blamed me.

And yet with all the loose talk was mixed up so much of real jollity and good-humour that it was impossible to feel wholly miserable.

Doubleday kept up his hospitality to the last. He would stop the best story to make a guest comfortable, and seemed to guess by instinct what everybody wanted.

At last the time came for separating, and I rose to go with feelings partly of relief, partly of regret. The evening had been a jolly one, and I had enjoyed it; but then, had I done well to enjoy it? That was the question.

"Oh, I say," said Daly, as we said good-night on the doorstep, "were you ever at a school called Stonebridge House?"

"Yes," said I, startled to hear the name once more. "You weren't there, were you?"

"No; but a fellow I know, called Flanagan, was, and--"

"Do you know Flanagan?" I exclaimed; "he's the very fellow I've been trying to find out. I _would_ like to see him again."

"Yes, he lives near us. I say, suppose you come up to the Field-Marshal and me on Tuesday; we live together, you know. We'll have Flanagan and a fellow or two in."

I gladly accepted this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs Nash's feeling myself a good deal more a "man of the world," and a good deal less of a hero, than I had left it that morning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

HOW I GOT RATHER THE WORST OF IT IN A CERTAIN ENCOUNTER.

My evening at Doubleday's lodgings was the first of a course of small dissipations which, however pleasant while they lasted, did not altogether tend to my profit.

Of course, I had no intention of going in for that sort of thing regularly; but, I thought, while Jack Smith was away for a few days, there would be no harm in relieving the dulness of my life at Beadle Square by occasionally accepting the hospitality of such decent, good- natured fellows as Doubleday and his friends. There was nothing wrong, surely, in one fellow going and having supper with another fellow now and then! How easy the process, when one wishes to deceive oneself!

But two days after Smith had gone home I received a letter which somewhat upset my calculations. It had the Packworth postmark, and was addressed in the same cramped hand in which the momentous letter which had summoned Jack from London had been written.

I was surprised that it was not in Jack's own hand. It ran as follows:--

"Sir,--I am sorry to say Master Johnny has took ill since he came down.

The doctor thinks it is smallpox; so please excuse him to the gentlemen, and say we hope it will make no difference, as he cannot come for a many weeks. Your humble--Jane Shield."

John ill--with smallpox! This was a blow! My first impulse was, at all risks, to go down and look after him. But I reflected that this would be, after all, foolish. I should certainly not be allowed to see him, and even if I were, I could not of course return to the office with the infection about me. Poor Jack! At least it was a comfort that he had some one to look after him.

My first care, after the receipt of the letter, was to seek an interview with the partners and explain matters to them. And this I found not a very formidable business. Mr Barnacle, indeed, did say something about its being awkward just when they were so busy to do without a clerk.

But Mr Merrett overruled this by reminding his partner that in a week or two his nephew would be coming to the office, and that, to begin with, he could fill up the vacant place.

"Besides," said he, with a warmth which made me feel quite proud of my friend--"besides, Smith is too promising a lad to spare."

So I was able to write a very rea.s.suring letter to good Mrs Shield, and tell her it would be all right about Jack's place when he came back.

Meanwhile, I entreated her to let me know regularly how he was getting on, and to tell me if his sister was better, and, in short, to keep me posted up in all the Smith news that was going.

This done, I set myself to face the prospect of a month or so of life in London without my chum.

I didn't like the prospect. The only thing that had made Beadle Square tolerable was his company, and how I should get on now with Mr Horncastle and his set I did not care to antic.i.p.ate.

I confided my misgivings to Doubleday, who laughed at them.

"Oh," said he, "you must turn that place up. I know it. One of our fellows was there once. It's an awfully seedy place to belong to."

"The worst of it is," said I--who, since my evening at Doubleday's, had come to treat him as a confidant--"that my uncle pays my lodging there; and if I went anywhere else he'd tell me to pay for myself."

"That's awkward," said Doubleday, meditatively; "pity he should stick you in such a cheap hole."

"I don't think, you know," said I, feeling rather extinguished by Doubleday's pitying tone, "it's such a very cheap place. It's three- and-six a week."

Doubleday gazed at me in astonishment, and then broke out into a loud laugh.

"Three-and-six a week! Why, my dear fellow, you could do it cheaper in a workhouse. Oh, good gracious! your uncle must be in precious low water to stick you up in a hole like that at three-and-six a week. Do you know what my lodgings cost, eh, young 'un?"

"No," said I, very crestfallen; "how much?"

"Fifteen bob, upon my honour, and none too grand. Three-and-six a week, why--I say, Crow!"

"Oh, don't go telling everybody!" cried I, feeling quite ashamed of myself.

"Oh, all serene. But it is rather rich, that. Good job you don't get your grub there."

I did not tell Doubleday that I did get my "grub" there, and left him to infer what he pleased by my silence.

"Anyhow," said he, "if you must hang on there, there's nothing to prevent your knocking about a bit of an evening. What do you generally go in for when your friend Bull's-eye's at home? I mean what do you do with yourselves of an evening?"