‘I thought I was sure to find you here,’ said Hugh.  ’Pretty nearly sure from eleven till five,’ said Brooke.  ’A hard stepmother like the Civil Service does not allow one much chance of relief.  I do get across to the club sometimes for a glass of sherry and a biscuit but here I am now, at any rate; and I’m very glad you have come.’  Then there was some talk between them about affairs at Exeter; but as they were interrupted before half an hour was over their heads by a summons brought for Burgess from one of the secretaries, it was agreed that they should dine together at Burgess’s club on the following day.  ’We can manage a pretty good beef-steak,’ said Brooke, ’and have a fair glass of sherry.  I don’t think you can get much more than that anywhere nowadays unless you want a dinner for eight at three guineas a head.  The magnificence of men has become so intolerable now that one is driven to be humble in one’s self-defence.’  Stanbury assured his acquaintance that he was anything but magnificent in his own ideas, that cold beef and beer was his usual fare, and at last allowed the clerk to wait upon the secretary.

‘I wouldn’t have any other fellow to meet you,’ said Brooke as they sat at their dinners, ’because in this way we can talk over the dear old woman at Exeter.  Yes, our fellow does make good soup, and it’s about all that he does do well.  As for getting a potato properly boiled, that’s quite out of the question.  Yes, it is a good glass of sherry.  I told you we’d a fairish tap of sherry on.  Well, I was there, backwards and forwards, for nearly six weeks.’

‘And how did you get on with the old woman?’

‘Like a house on fire,’ said Brooke.

‘She didn’t quarrel with you?’

’No upon the whole she did not.  I always felt that it was touch and go.  She might or she might not.  Every now and then she looked at me, and said a sharp word, as though it was about to come.  But I had determined when I went there altogether to disregard that kind of thing.’

‘It’s rather important to you is it not?’

‘You mean about her money?’

‘Of course, I mean about her money,’ said Stanbury.

‘It is important and so it was to you.’

’Not in the same degree, or nearly so.  And as for me, it was not on the cards that we shouldn’t quarrel.  I am so utterly a Bohemian in all my ideas of life, and she is so absolutely the reverse, that not to have quarrelled would have been hypocritical on my part or on hers.  She had got it into her head that she had a right to rule my life; and, of course, she quarrelled with me when I made her understand that she should do nothing of the kind.  Now, she won’t want to rule you.’

‘I hope not.’

‘She has taken you up,’ continued Stanbury, ’on altogether a different understanding.  You are to her the representative of a family to whom she thinks she owes the restitution of the property which se enjoys.  I was simply a member of her own family, to which she owes nothing.  She thought it well to help one of us out of what she regarded as her private purse, and she chose me.  But the matter is quite different with you.’