recall. Any one who had seen me
would have supposed that talk like this was what I most relished. Had
they but heard another voice within reproaching me, they might have
pitied rather than blamed me.

And yet with all the loose talk was mixed up so much of real jollity and
good-humour that it was impossible to feel wholly miserable.

Doubleday kept up his hospitality to the last. He would stop the best
story to make a guest comfortable, and seemed to guess by instinct what
everybody wanted.

At last the time came for separating, and I rose to go with feelings
partly of relief, partly of regret. The evening had been a jolly one,
and I had enjoyed it; but then, had I done well to enjoy it? That was
the question.

"Oh, I say," said Daly, as we said good-night on the doorstep, "were you
ever at a school called Stonebridge House?"

"Yes," said I, startled to hear the name once more. "You weren't there,
were you?"

"No; but a fellow I know, called Flanagan, was, and--"

"Do you know Flanagan?" I exclaimed; "he's the very fellow I've been
trying to find out. I _would_ like to see him again."

"Yes, he lives near us. I say, suppose you come up to the Field-Marshal
and me on Tuesday; we live together, you know. We'll have Flanagan and
a fellow or two in."

I gladly accepted this delightful invitation, and went back to Mrs
Nash's feeling myself a good deal more a "man of the world," and a good
deal less of a hero, than I had left it that morning.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

HOW I GOT RATHER THE WORST OF IT IN A CERTAIN ENCOUNTER.

My evening at Doubleday's lodgings was the first of a course of small
dissipations which, however pleasant while they lasted, did not
altogether tend to my profit.

Of course, I had no intention of going in for that sort of thing
regularly; but, I thought, while Jack Smith was away for a few days,
there would be no harm in relieving the dulness of my life at Beadle
Square by occasionally accepting the hospitality of such decent, good-
natured fellows as Doubleday and his friends. There was nothing wrong,
surely, in one fellow going and having supper with another fellow now
and then! How easy the process, when one wishes to deceive oneself!

But two days after Smith had gone home I received a letter which
somewhat upset my calculations. It had the Packworth postmark, and was
addressed in the same cramped hand in which the momentous letter which
had summoned Jack from London had