The first thing he did, when all was right again, was carefully to put it in order.
But never during those times had I seen his treasure so badly treated and neglected as when twenty years later, I found it again, dusty and cracked at the back of the bookshelf.

The reader will now be able to understand how sorrowful were the reflections it aroused, and how it led me to suspect the story of a joyless life; and I trust he will forgive me for having taken him so far from David Holst's room--where I sat and waited for my friend to come with the punch--into the land of my youthful recollections.

For three years we had been together almost daily.

After that David had to go out as tutor, and our ways parted, as they so often do in this life.
And this evening we had met again.
There was a jingling in the passage, and immediately after David Holst carefully opened the door for a servant-girl, who brought in a steaming jug of hot water and other requisites for punch, which were most welcome to a man who had been out several hours in the wind and rain, as I had that very afternoon.
David found me installed on the sofa with his pipe in my mouth and his slippers on my feet, just as he would have done in the old days, and this I reckoned as one of my cunning artifices; for with these passes, his pipe and slippers, I reinstated myself, without more ado, on the old friendly footing.

I felt like a general who is fortunate enough to open the campaign by occupying a whole province.
In default of his accustomed place on the sofa, David drew a chair up to the table and sat down opposite to me, with the punch tray between us.
We were now once more on the banks of the same river of delight, in which we had so often bathed and tumbled in our youth; but now we both approached it more carefully.
In the course of conversation, he often leaned over towards me, as if listening, and in this way his head came within the region of the lamp's bright light.