"When do you expect Daisy?" asked Charles, after a pause.
"This evening."
"This evening!"
"I shall snatch a moment at dusk to fetch her," added Frank. "Mrs.
Townley is going into Cornwall on a visit to The Mount, and Daisy
comes home."
"Have the people at The Mount forgiven Daisy yet?"
"No. They will not do that, I expect, until I am established as a
first-rate practitioner, with servants and carriages about me. Mrs.
St. Clare likes show."
"She wouldn't like this, I'm afraid," spoke Charles, candidly, looking
up at the low ceiling and across at the walls.
Frank was saved a reply. Sam, the boy, who had been out on an errand,
entered, and began delivering a message to his master.
"Would you like some dinner, Charley?" asked Frank. "Come along, I
don't know what there is to-day."
Passing through a side-door behind him, Frank stepped into an
adjoining sitting-room. It was narrow, but comfortable. The window
looked to the street. The fireplace was at the opposite end, side by
side with the door that led to the house beyond. A mahogany sofa
covered with horsehair stood against the wall on one side; a low
bookcase and a work-table on the other. The chairs matched the sofa;
on the centre table the dinner-cloth was laid.
"Not a bad room, this," said Charley, thinking it an improvement on
the shop.
"There's a better sitting-room upstairs," observed Frank.
"Well furnished, too. Brown liked to have decent things about him; and
his people, he said, helped him liberally when he set up here. That
work-table he bought the other day for Daisy's benefit."
"He must be rather a good sort of a fellow."
"He's a very good one. What have you for dinner, Eve? Put a knife and
fork for this gentleman."
"Roast beef, sir," replied the old woman, who was carrying in the
dishes, and nodded graciously to Charles, as much as to say he was
welcome. "I thought the new mistress might like to find a cut of cold
meat in the house."
"Quite right," said Frank. "Sit down, Charley."
Charley sat down, and did ample justice to the dinner, especially the
Yorkshire pudding, a dish of which he was particularly fond, and had
not lost his relish for amidst the dainties of the table at Eagles'
Nest. He began to think Frank's quarters were not so bad on the whole,
compared with no quarters at all, and no dinner to eat.
"Have you chanced to see that man, Charley, since you came to London?"
inquired Frank, putting the question with a certain reluctance, for he
hated to allude to the subject.
"What man?" returned Charley.
"The Tiger."
"No, I have not seen him. I learnt at Oxford that I had been mistaken
in thinking he was looking after me----"
"He was not looking after you," interrupted Frank.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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