Why should
I endeavour to conceal from you'--he coloured deeply though--'that
I neither understood him nor cared to understand him when I was his
companion; and that I am very truly sorry for it now!'
It was so sincerely said, at once so modestly and manfully, that John
offered him his hand as if he had not done so before; and Martin giving
his in the same open spirit, all constraint between the young men
vanished.
'Now pray,' said John, 'when I tire your patience very much in what I
am going to say, recollect that it has an end to it, and that the end is
the point of the story.'
With this preface, he related all the circumstances connected with his
having presided over the illness and slow recovery of the patient at the
Bull; and tacked on to the skirts of that narrative Tom's own account of
the business on the wharf. Martin was not a little puzzled when he came
to an end, for the two stories seemed to have no connection with each
other, and to leave him, as the phrase is, all abroad.
'If you will excuse me for one moment,' said John, rising, 'I will beg
you almost immediately to come into the next room.
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