Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/290

 *member me? I'm Hutton. I was in Foxey's house with you at school."

"Of course, of course," said Northcote, hardly knowing a word that he spoke; "I remember you perfectly well. You have not altered at all."

"You've not altered much, although you look awfully old and very much thinner than you used to look. I want you to mention an evening that you can come round and dine with my governor—you remember the governor I used to get ragged so tremendously for boasting about? He will be delighted to meet you. I shall tell him all about this; he is the kindest old soul."

"Thanks, but I can't dine with you until I've got my evening clothes out of pawn."

Northcote's schoolfellow laughed heartily.

"No, you've not altered," he said. "Just the same amusing cynical old cuss you were at school—just the same cynical old cuss of whom we were so much afraid and who was so frightfully unpopular."

"Poverty and pride were never a popular combination," said Northcote, aroused from his preoccupation by the sympathy of one of the few who had supported him in his youth. "If I hadn't been a bit of a football-player I don't know what would have happened to me in those days. I used to derive pleasure, I remember, from insulting everybody."

"Foxey used to call you Diogenes."

"He used to say that Diogenes was considerably the pleasanter fellow of the two."

"Poor old Foxey always feared you, I believe, just as did everybody else. You were a gloomy,