Quitting the Guard-table one Sunday afternoon, when by chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he and his friend were making their way down Germain Street, and Dick all of a sudden left his companion's arm, and ran after a gentleman who was poring over a folio volume at the book-shop near to St. James's Church. He was a fair, tall man, in a snuff-colored suit, with a plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance--at least when compared to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his jolly round person with the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet and gold lace. The Captain rushed up, then, to the student of the book-stall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and would have kissed him--for Dick was always hugging and bussing his friends--but the other stepped back with a flush on his pale face, seeming to decline this public manifestation of Steele's regard. “My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this age?” cries the Captain, still holding both his friend's hands; “I have been languishing for thee this fortnight.” “A fortnight is not an age, Dick,” says the other, very good-humoredly. (He had light blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a face perfectly regular and handsome, like a tinted statue.) “And I have been hiding myself--where do you think?” “What! not across the water, my dear Joe?” says Steele, with a look of great alarm: “thou knowest I have always--” “No,” says his friend, interrupting him with a smile: “we are not come to such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding, sir, at a place where people never think of finding you--at my own lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe now and drink a glass of sack: will your honor come?” “Harry Esmond, come hither,” cries out Dick. “Thou hast heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guardian angel?” “Indeed,” says Mr. Esmond, with a bow, “it is not from you only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and I have some of yours by heart, though I have put on a red coat. . . . 'O qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen;' shall I go on, sir?” says Mr. Esmond, who, indeed, had read and loved the charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that time knew and admired them. “This is Captain Esmond who was at Blenheim,” says Steele. “Lieutenant Esmond,” says the other, with a low bow, “at Mr. Addison's service. “I have heard of you,” says Mr. Addison, with a smile; as, indeed, everybody about town had heard that unlucky story about Esmond's dowager aunt and the Duchess. “We were going to the 'George' to take a bottle before the play,” says Steele: “wilt thou be one, Joe?” Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he was still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends; and invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in the Haymarket, whither we accordingly went.