Mr.Longdon wondered to Vanderbank if their course might by any chance be the same; which led our young friend immediately to express a readiness to see him safely in any direction that should accommodate him.

As the footman's whistle spent itself in vain they got together into the four-wheeler, where at the end of a few moments more Vanderbank became conscious of having proposed his own rooms as a wind-up to their drive.

Wouldn't that be a better finish of the evening than just separating in the wet?
He liked his new acquaintance, who struck him as in a manner clinging to him, who was staying at an hotel presumably at that hour dismal, and who, confessing with easy humility to a connexion positively timid with a club at which one couldn't have a visitor, accepted his invitation under pressure.

Vanderbank, when they arrived, was amused at the air of added extravagance with which he said he would keep the cab: he so clearly enjoyed to that extent the sense of making a night of it.

"You young men, I believe, keep them for hours, eh?
At least they did in my time," he laughed--"the wild ones! But I think of them as all wild then.
I dare say that when one settles in town one learns how to manage; only I'm afraid, you know, that I've got completely out of it.