as
I do, every day!

"This is my second mark, Bob, this tree growing out in the road.
Now, you see, we are pretty well in the country.

"Can you run?"

"Yes, I can run pretty well, Mr. Medlin."

"Very well, Bob. You see that tree growing out beyond that garden
wall, about four hundred yards on. It is four hundred and twenty,
for I have measured it. Now then, you walk on fifty yards, and then
run for your life. See if I don't catch you, before you are there."

Bob, wondering as he went along at the astounding change that had
come over his companion, took fifty long steps; then he heard a
shout of "Now!" and went off at the top of his speed. He was still
a hundred yards from the mark, when he heard steps coming rapidly
up behind him; and then the clerk dashed past him, and came in
fully twenty yards ahead.

"You don't run badly," he said, as Bob stopped, panting. "My Jack
generally comes to meet me, and I always give him seventy yards,
and only beat him by about as much as I do you. He couldn't come,
this afternoon. He is busy helping his mother to get things
straight. I expect we shall meet him, presently.

"Well, what are you laughing at?"

"I was just thinking how astonished my uncle would be, if he were
to see us."

Mr. Medlin gave a hearty laugh.

"Not so much as you would think, Bob. Five years ago, my employer
suddenly asked me, just as we were shutting up one afternoon, if I
was fond of fishing. I said that I used to be.

"He said, 'I am going down, for a fortnight, into Hampshire. I have
no one to go with--suppose you come with me.'

"I said, 'I will.'

"He said, 'Coach tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, Black Horse
Yard.'

"I was there. As we went over London Bridge I found myself, as
usual; and he found himself. I explained to him that I could not
help it. He said he didn't want me to help it. We had a glorious
fortnight together, and we have been out every year, since. He
never alludes to it, between times. No more do I. He is stiffer
than usual for a bit. So am I. But we both know each other.

"You do not suppose that he would have sent you to me, if he hadn't
known that I have got another side to me?"

"Well, I should not have thought," Bob said, "from the way he
talked, when he introduced me to you, that he ever had such an idea
in his mind."

"He was obliged to talk so," Mr. Medlin said, laughing. "We were
just machines at the time, both of us. But he talked in quite a
different way