boy, you are almost in the position of host tonight. You belong, as it were, to the place, and in a manner represent it towards a stranger. Mr. Neville is a stranger, and you should respect the obligations of hospitality. And, Mr. Neville,” laying his left hand on the inner shoulder of that young gentleman, and thus walking on between them, hand to shoulder on either side: “you will pardon me; but I appeal to you to govern your temper too. Now, what is amiss? But why ask! Let there be nothing amiss, and the question is superfluous. We are all three on a good understanding, are we not?”
After a silent struggle between the two young men who shall speak last, Edwin Drood strikes in with: “So far as I am concerned, Jack, there is no anger in me.”
“Nor in me,” says Neville Landless, though not so freely; or perhaps so carelessly. “But if Mr. Drood knew all that lies behind me, far away from here, he might know better how it is that sharp-edged words have sharp edges to wound me.”
“Perhaps,” says Jasper, in a soothing manner, “we had better not qualify our good understanding. We had better not say anything having the appearance of a remonstrance or condition; it might not seem generous. Frankly and freely, you see there is no anger in Ned. Frankly and freely, there is no anger in you, Mr. Neville?”
“None at all, Mr. Jasper.” Still, not quite so frankly or so freely; or, be it said once again, not quite so carelessly perhaps.
“All over then! Now, my bachelor gatehouse is a few yards from here, and the heater is on the fire, and the wine and glasses are on the table, and it is not a stone’s throw from Minor Canon Corner. Ned, you are up and away tomorrow. We will carry Mr. Neville in with us, to take a stirrup-cup.”
“With all my heart, Jack.”