The
two others remained standing, vaguely gazing at the ceiling, and
exchanging ostentatiously admiring but hollow remarks about the
furniture in unnecessary whispers. Yet they were apparently men of
a certain habit of importance and small authority, with more or
less critical attitude in their speech.
To them presently entered a young man of about five-and-twenty,
with remarkably bright and singularly sympathetic eyes. Having
swept the group in a smiling glance, he singled out the lonely
occupier of the tete-a-tete, and moved pleasantly towards him. The
man rose instantly with an eager gratified look.
"Well, Paul, I didn't allow you'd remember me. It's a matter of
four years since we met at Marysville. And now you're bein' a
great man you've"--
No one could have known from the young man's smiling face that he
really had not recognized his visitor at first, and that his
greeting was only an exhibition of one of those happy instincts for
which he was remarkable. But, following the clew suggested by his
visitor, he was able to say promptly and gayly:--
"I don't know why I should forget Tony Shear or the Marysville
boys," turning with a half-confiding smile to the other visitors,
who, after the human fashion, were beginning to be resentfully
impatient of this special attention.
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