Such was the import of the reflections with which you saddened
our parting bottle of claret, and thus I must needs interpret the
terms of your melancholy adieu.

And why should this be so, Alan? Why the deuce should you not be
sitting precisely opposite to me at this moment, in the same
comfortable George Inn; thy heels on the fender, and thy
juridical brow expanding its plications as a pun rose in your
fancy? Above all, why, when I fill this very glass of wine,
cannot I push the bottle to you, and say, 'Fairford, you are
chased!' Why, I say, should not all this be, except because Alan
Fairford has not the same true sense of friendship as Darsie
Latimer, and will not regard our purses as common, as well as our
sentiments?

I am alone in the world; my only guardian writes to me of a large
fortune which will be mine when I reach the age of twenty-five
complete; my present income is, thou knowest, more than
sufficient for all my wants; and yet thou--traitor as thou art to
the cause of friendship--dost deprive me of the pleasure of thy
society, and submittest, besides, to self-denial on thine own
part, rather than my wanderings should cost me a few guineas
more! Is this regard for my purse, or for thine own pride? Is
it not equally absurd and unreasonable, whichever source it
springs from? For myself, I tell thee, I have, and shall have,
more than enough for both. This same methodical Samuel
Griffiths, of Ironmonger Lane, Guildhall, London, whose letter
arrives as duly as quarter-day, has sent me, as I told thee,
double allowance for this my twenty-first birthday, and an