"Well, Herrick, what do you say about putting me up?
There are two or three things I want to do in town, and it is a bore staying on at the Briars now old Fred has gone." "When do you want to come to me ?" asked Malcolm.

"I am to sleep at Queen's Gate the next two nights, and I have promised to take Miss Sheldon out to-morrow.

She is my mother's adopted daughter, you know--Anna Sheldon.

I have often mentioned her to you." Then Cedric nodded.
"I shall be back at Chelsea on Friday, if you like to come to me then; but the guest-chamber is remarkably small--at present it holds all my lumber and little else." But as Cedric professed himself indifferent on the subject of his own comfort--an assertion that drew a covert smile from his friend's lips--the matter was soon settled.
An animated conversation ensued, consisting mainly of a disjointed monologue on Cedric's part; for Malcolm Herrick only contributed a laconic remark or question at intervals, but there was a kindly gleam in his eyes as he listened, as though the fair, closely-cropped head lying back on the shabby cushion, with the eager bright young face, was a goodly spectacle.
At first sight the friendship between these two men seemed singularly ill-assorted; for what possible affinity could there be between a thoughtful, intellectual man like Malcolm Herrick, with his habitual reserve, his nature refined, critical, and yet imaginative, with its strong bias to pessimism, and its intolerance of all shams, and Cedric, with his facile, pleasure-loving temperament, at once indolent and mercurial--a creature of moods and tenses, as fiery as a Welshman, but full of lovable and generous impulses?
The disparity between their ages also seemed to forbid anything like equality of sympathy.

Malcolm was at least eight or nine years older, and at times he seemed middle-aged in Cedric's eyes.