A minute later I was with him.
I suppose he was bound to look slightly different after two years. He
was sitting in an armchair with the sun on his face, and that, no doubt,
gave him a look of thinness and pallor that wasn't real. Anyhow, he was
delighted to see me. His eyes lit up with his delight--I could see that.
He had been perfectly well, he said, until two days before, when somehow
or other he had caught a chill. His temperature had been at one time as
high as a hundred and two, but was now down to ninety-nine point five,
which showed that he was almost better. He was so sorry I had had to
find my own way from the station; he had badly wanted to come and meet
me, but his doctor (who, incidentally, lived in the set of rooms
immediately below) had absolutely forbidden him to go out. But he would
be all right, he was certain, in a day or so.
There comes always, soon after the meeting of long-absent friends, a
sudden hiatus when the first rapture of reunion is over and the quiet
joy of companionship has hardly yet resumed its sway. At such a moment
one says anything--_anything_--to break the awkward and intolerable
silence. I, for example, when that moment came, made some remark about
the comfort of his surroundings. "Better than Swinton Street, eh? ...
And even a girl who speaks English--of a sort."