AN EXPEDITION
I wondered audibly where the Bench was when Temple
and I sat together alone at Squire Gregory’s
breakfast-table next morning, very thirsty for tea.
He said it was a place in London, but did not add the
sort of place, only that I should soon be coming to
London with him; and I remarked, ‘Shall I?’
and smiled at him, as if in a fit of careless affection.
Then he talked runningly of the theatres and pantomimes
and London’s charms.
The fear I had of this Bench made me passingly conscious
of Temple’s delicacy in not repeating its name,
though why I feared it there was nothing to tell me.
I must have dreamed of it just before waking, and I
burned for reasonable information concerning it.
Temple respected my father too much to speak out the
extent of his knowledge on the subject, so we drank
our tea with the grandeur of London for our theme,
where, Temple assured me, you never had a headache
after a carouse overnight: a communication that
led me to think the country a far less favourable
place of abode for gentlemen. We quitted the house
without seeing our host or the captain, and greatly
admired by the footmen, the maids, and the grooms
for having drunk their masters under the table, which
it could not be doubted that we had done, as Temple
modestly observed while we sauntered off the grounds
under the eyes of the establishment. We had done
it fairly, too, with none of those Jack the Giant-Killer
tricks my grandfather accused us of.
The squire would not, and he could not, believe our
story until he heard the confession from the mouth
of the captain. After that he said we were men
and heroes, and he tipped us both, much to Janet Ilchester’s
advantage, for the squire was a royal giver, and Temple’s
money had already begun to take the same road as mine.
Temple, in fact, was falling desperately in love;
for this reason he shrank from quitting Riversley.
I perceived it as clearly as a thing seen through
a windowpane. He was always meditating upon dogs,
and what might be the price of this dog or that, and
whether lapdogs were good travellers. The fashionable
value of pugs filled him with a sort of despair.
‘My goodness!’ he used an exclamation more
suitable to women, ‘forty or fifty pounds you
say one costs, Richie?’
I pretended to estimate the probable cost of one.
’Yes, about that; but I’ll buy you one,
one day or other, Temple.’
The dear little fellow coloured hot; he was too much
in earnest to laugh at the absurdity of his being
supposed to want a pug for himself, and walked round
me, throwing himself into attitudes with shrugs and
loud breathings. ’I don’t . . . don’t
think that I . . . I care for nothing but Newfoundlands
and mastiffs,’ said he. He went on shrugging
and kicking up his heels.
‘Girls like pugs,’ I remarked.
‘I fancy they do,’ said Temple, with a
snort of indifference.
