“Thank you, thank you, John. I thought you couldn’t have forgotten old times altogether. I thought you had more heart than that. As for London, I seem to have lost my old fondness for it somehow. The old folk are dead; my poor mother died there as soon as we got back. I seem to have got disgusted with the bricks and mortar somehow. There’s nothing I should like better than to settle down for the rest of my days in a nice country place, as you have done.” John Bradfield did not take this hint, as his friend had hoped. But he invited Marrable to come upstairs, and said he would see what he could do for him in the way of evening dress. Unfortunately this was not much. John Bradfield was slim, Alfred Marrable was stout. The struggle of the latter to get into the clothes of the former left him, therefore, both uncomfortable and apoplectic. No persuasions, however, would induce him to go down to dinner in his own shabby morning clothes, for Marrable flattered himself that he was a lady’s man, and that he looked his best--which he did not--in evening dress. John Bradfield, who had been turning over the situation in his mind, gave his old friend a hint as they went downstairs. “I say, old chap,” said he, in a confidential tone, “there’s one thing I want you to do to oblige me.” “Anything, old man, anything.” “You see, I’m a great man here, not the poor starveling I was when you and I went out in the steerage to Melbourne thirty years ago. I don’t think I’ve grown much of a snob, but still one doesn’t care, when one’s got on, to have all the servants talking about their master having been glad enough to do things for himself once. Do you see?” “Oh, yes, yes; of course, of course. I understand perfectly. You may rely upon me, old chap. I flatter myself I’m not wanting in tact, whatever my faults may be.” John Bradfield, although he feared that Alfred was giving himself too high a character, went on: “So no talk about old times and hard times, or”--his voice trembled a little here, for this was in truth a point on which he was most anxious--“or old acquaintances. Let the dead past bury its dead, as the poet says,” he continued, jocularly, “and we’ll have a merry Christmas over its grave.” “That’s it, that’s it; so we will,” agreed Marrable, heartily, as they reached the drawing-room door. In all good faith Alfred Marrable had given his promise to be discreet, and in all good faith John Bradfield had told him that he should have a merry Christmas. But unluckily the powers of darkness in the shape of Mrs. Graham-Shute, were against him. Indeed, John Bradfield had had his doubts about her, and as he entered the drawing-room with his _protégé_ in his ill-fitting clothes, he whispered to the latter: “Never mind the Queen of Snobs,” with a glance in the portly lady’s direction.