--Yours very truly,
'SIMPKINS JENKINS.
'Dear me--very awkward!' said Stephen, rather en l'air, and confused with the kind of confusion that assails an understrapper when he has been enlarged by accident to the dimensions of a superior, and is somewhat rudely pared down to his original size.
'What is awkward?' said Miss Swancourt.
Smith by this time recovered his equanimity, and with it the professional dignity of an experienced architect.
'Important business demands my immediate presence in London, I regret to say,' he replied.
'What! Must you go at once?' said Mr. Swancourt, looking over the edge of his letter. 'Important business? A young fellow like you to have important business!'
'The truth is,' said Stephen blushing, and rather ashamed of having pretended even so slightly to a consequence which did not belong to him,--'the truth is, Mr. Hewby has sent to say I am to come home; and I must obey him.'
'I see; I see. It is politic to do so, you mean. Now I can see more than you think. You are to be his partner. I booked you for that directly I read his letter to me the other day, and the way he spoke of you. He thinks a great deal of you, Mr. Smith, or he wouldn't be so anxious for your return.'
Unpleasant to Stephen such remarks as these could not sound; to have the expectancy of partnership with one of the largest-practising architects in London thrust upon him was cheering, however untenable he felt the idea to be. He saw that, whatever Mr. Hewby might think, Mr. Swancourt certainly thought much of him to entertain such an idea on such slender ground as to be absolutely no ground at all. And then, unaccountably, his speaking face exhibited a cloud of sadness, which a reflection on the remoteness of any such contingency could hardly have sufficed to cause.
Elfride was struck with that look of his; even Mr. Swancourt noticed it.
'Well,' he said cheerfully, 'never mind that now. You must come again on your own account; not on business. Come to see me as a visitor, you know--say, in your holidays--all you town men have holidays like schoolboys. When are they?'
'In August, I believe.'
'Very well; come in August; and then you need not hurry away so. I am glad to get somebody decent to talk to, or at, in this outlandish ultima Thule. But, by the bye, I have something to say--you won't go to-day?'
'No; I need not,' said Stephen hesitatingly. 'I am not obliged to get back before Monday morning.'