He greeted me warmly. I had grown taller, and he, I thought, had grown shorter and smaller and rounder but otherwise he was unchanged. He struck me as being rather shabby, and the silk hat he produced and put on, when, after mysterious negotiations in the back premises he achieved his freedom to accompany me, was past its first youth; but he was as buoyant and confident as ever.
“ Come to ask me about all THAT,” he cried. “I’ve never written yet.”
“ Oh, among other things,” said I, with a sudden regrettable politeness, and waived the topic of his trusteeship to ask after my aunt Susan.
“ We’ll have her out of it,” he said suddenly; “we’ll go somewhere. We don’t get you in London every day.”
“ It’s my first visit,” I said, “I’ve never seen London before”; and that made him ask me wh
