'But why should a little thing like that stand
between friends?'
"'It shouldn't, Hawley,' I answered, meekly; 'but it's condemnedly
unusual, you know, for a man to associate even with his best friends
fifteen years after they've died and been buried.'
"'Do you mean to say, Austin, that just because I was weak enough once to
succumb to a bad cold, you, the dearest friend of my youth, the closest
companion of my school-days, the partner of my childish joys, intend to go
back on me here in a strange city?'
"'Hawley,' I answered, huskily, 'not a bit of it. My letter of credit, my
room at the hotel, my dress suit, even my ticket to Coney Island, are at
your disposal; but I think the partner of your childish joys ought first
to be let in on the ground-floor of this enterprise, and informed how the
deuce you manage to turn up in New York fifteen years subsequent to your
obsequies. Is New York the hereafter for boys of your kind, or is this
some freak of my imagination?'"
"That was an eminently proper question," I put in, just to show that while
the story I was hearing terrified me, I was not altogether speechless.
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