That the young Englishman was able to pay a considerable board, was a matter of no importance to Mr.Fairford; it was enough that his presence seemed to make his son cheerful and happy.

He was compelled to allow that 'Darsie was a fine lad, though unsettled,' and he would have had some difficulty in getting rid of him, and the apprehensions which his levities excited, had it not been for the voluntary excursion which gave rise to the preceding correspondence, and in which Mr.Fairford secretly rejoiced, as affording the means of separating Alan from his gay companion, at least until he should have assumed, and become accustomed to, the duties of his dry and laborious profession.
But the absence of Darsie was far from promoting the end which the elder Mr.Fairford had expected and desired.

The young men were united by the closest bonds of intimacy; and the more so, that neither of them sought nor desired to admit any others into their society.

Alan Fairford was averse to general company, from a disposition naturally reserved, and Darsie Latimer from a painful sense of his own unknown origin, peculiarly afflicting in a country where high and low are professed genealogists.

The young men were all in all to each other; it is no wonder, therefore, that their separation was painful, and that its effects upon Alan Fairford, joined to the anxiety occasioned by the tenor of his friend's letters, greatly exceeded what the senior had anticipated.