When they left Mr. Bolby, therefore, and were comfortably established
in a quiet hotel in Jermyn Street, Dick, seeing that Reginald was
absolutely indifferent as to where he went, or what he did, took the
whole arrangement of their London life into his own hands and
succeeded in going to a good many places which would have terribly
shocked the vicar had he known. Not that such forbidden pleasures did
them much harm, for both lads were extremely sensible for their age,
still Dick finding himself able, through Reginald's generosity, to
spend a good deal of money, took his friend and himself to sundry
shady places of which they might just as well have been ignorant. But
Nemesis soon came down upon the unhappy Richard, and just as he was
developing into a fair specimen of a man about Town his bachelor uncle
at Folkestone wrote him a letter asking him to come down on a visit
and as Dick was supposed to be his bachelor uncle's heir, he had to
leave Town, much to his own disgust and to the regret of Reginald, who
missed his lively friend every hour of the day.
He still stayed in Town, however, but as he knew no one, his existence
was to say the least extremely dull. Reginald was essentially of a
social nature and wanted someone to whom he could talk, therefore he
was not sorry when one day Basil Beaumont, who had been waiting for
the departure of Dick, called upon him and henceforth constituted
himself his bear leader. As they had seen nothing of the artist since
their arrival in Town, Dick had never thought of telling Reginald his
mistrust of the fascinating Beaumont, so the young man, remembering
the artist's kindness about his probable career as a singer, felt very
friendly towards him and was quite prepared to accept his offer of
companionship as the outcome of a kindly disposition and not the
result of a carefully calculated scheme.