It had been understood that he was to take his leave on the morrow, though Vanderbank was to stay another day. Mr. Longdon had for the Sunday dinner invited three or four of his neighbours to “meet” the two gentlemen from town, so that it was not till the company had departed, or in other words till near bedtime, that our four friends could again have become aware, as between themselves, of that directness of mutual relation which forms the subject of our picture. It had not, however, prevented Nanda’s slipping upstairs as soon as the doctor and his wife had gone, and the manner indeed in which, on the stroke of eleven, Mr. Longdon conformed to his tradition of appropriating a particular candle was as positive an expression of it as any other. Nothing in him was more amiable than the terms maintained between the rigour of his personal habits and his free imagination of the habits of others. He deprecated as regards the former, it might have been seen, most signs of likeness, and no one had ever dared to learn how he would have handled a show of imitation. “The way to flatter him,” Mitchy threw off five minutes later, “is not to make him think you resemble or agree with him, but to let him see how different you perceive he can bear to think you. I mean of course without hating you.” “But what interest have YOU,” Vanderbank asked, “in the way to flatter him?” “My dear fellow, more interest than you. I haven’t been here all day without arriving at conclusions on the credit he has opened to you--!” “Do you mean the amount he’ll settle?” “You have it in your power,” said Mitchy, “to make it anything you like.” “And is he then--so bloated?” Mitchy was on his feet in the apartment in which their host had left them, and he had at first for this question but an expressive motion of the shoulders in respect to everything in the room. “See, judge, guess, feel!” But it was as if Vanderbank, before the fire, consciously controlled his own attention. “Oh I don’t care a hang!”