d; but though I kept on turning over the pages, I did not follow the
text; for I was either thinking about Mrs Dean's needle as it darted in
and out of the stuff she was sewing, or else about Mr John Dempster and
our meeting that day--of how I had promised to go up and see him on
Sunday, and how different he was to his cousin.

The time must have gone fast, for when the clock began to strike, it
went on up to ten; and I was thinking it was impossible that it could be
so late, when I happened to glance across at little Mrs Dean, whose
work had dropped into her lap, and she was as fast asleep then as her
son had been at the office hours before.

CHAPTER THREE.

MY NEW FRIENDS.

Poor Esau and I had had a hard time at the office, for it seemed that my
patient forbearing way of receiving all the fault-finding made Mr
Dempster go home at night to invent unpleasant things to say, till, as I
had listened, it had seemed as if my blood boiled, and a hot sensation
came into my throat.

All this had greatly increased by the Saturday afternoon, and had set me
thinking that there was something in what Esau said, and that I should
be better anywhere than where I was.

But on the Sunday afternoon, as I walked up the sunny road to Kentish
Town, and turned down a side street of small old-looking houses, each
with its bit of garden and flowers, everything looked so bright and
pleasant, even there, that my spirits began to rise; and all the more
from the fact that at one of the cottage-like places with its porch and
flowers, there were three cages outside, two of whose inmates, a lark
and a canary, were singing loudly and making the place ring.

It is curious how a musical sound takes one back to the past. In an
instant as I walked on, I was seeing the bright river down at home, with
the boat gliding along, the roach and dace flashing away to right and
left, the chub scurrying from under the willows, the water-weeds and
white buttercups brushing against the sides, and the lark singing high
overhead in the blue sky.

London and its smoke were gone, and the houses to right and left had no
existence for me then, till I was suddenly brought back to the present
by a hand being laid on my shoulder, and a familiar voice saying--

"Mr Gordon! Had you forgotten the address? You have passed the
house!"

As these words were uttered a hand grasped mine very warmly, and I was
looking in the thin, worn, pleasant features of Mr John De