thirty years could add but little. But the talk was not ended yet;
indeed, it seemed like so many of those Tithefields talks, as if in the
'eternal fitness of things' it never could, would, or should end. It was
I at last who gave it pause, and--yes! indeed, it was he. We had,
somehow, not met for quite three years, chums as we had been at school.
He had left there for an office some time before I did, and, oddly
enough, this was our first meeting since then. A purchaser for one of
those aforesaid treatises on farriery just then coming in, dislodged us;
so, bidding Samuel good-bye--he and Narcissus already arranging for 'a
night'--we obeyed a mutual instinct, and presently found ourselves in
the snuggery of a quaint tavern, which was often to figure hereafter in
our sentimental history, though probably little in these particular
chapters of it. The things 'seen done at "The Mermaid "' may some day be
written in another place, where the Reader will know from the beginning
what to expect, and not feel that he has been induced to buy a volume
under false pretences.




CHAPTER III


IN WHICH NARCISSUS OPENS HIS 'GLADSTONE'

Though it was so long since we had met--is not three years indeed 'so
long' in youth?--we had hardly to wait for our second glass to be again
_en rapport_. Few men grow so rapidly as Narcissus did in those young
days, but fewer still can look back on old enthusiasms and superannuated
ideals with a tenderness so delicately considerate. Most men hasten to