"I have just dined, so we might as well smoke a friendly weed together." "You can help yourself--there are some excellent cigars in that drawer--but I do not feel like smoking myself." Cedric spoke rather sulkily and with none of his accustomed amiability.

"Shall I give you some whiskey and soda ?" But Malcolm refused this refreshment--no man was more abstemious than he.
"If you want to finish your letter I can look at the paper for half an hour;" but this suggestion seemed only to irritate Cedric.
"Oh, there is no hurry," he returned hastily; "I could not write a sentence decently, feeling you were waiting for me to finish.

Well," struggling with his ill-humour, "what have you been doing with yourself since you left Staplegrove?
You look rather seedy and a bit pale about the gills--do you and the giant smoke too much ?" "Oh, I am well enough," replied Malcolm hurriedly.

"If we come to that, you have rather a weedy appearance yourself;" for Cedric looked decidedly thinner, and his eyes were almost unnaturally bright.

He seemed older, too, and changed in some undefinable way; but he had never looked handsomer.