The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

REUBEN'S friend, the pigeon-fancier, never showed in public. I asked Rube, after a day or two, whether he was there still, and Rube answered that he was there still, off and on. I was very sorry to hear it, though I could hardly have told any one why.

Reuben never came in of a night now; at least never came to sit with us. Sometimes he would come in for a few minutes, with his pockets always full of bulls'-eyes and rock and such things, and would give them to the children, looking steadily at Emma all the while, and then go away again. He would not let me come up to his room. He seemed not at all anxious to conceal the fact, that there was some one who came there who was, to put it elegantly, an ineligible acquaintance. My father became acquainted with the fact, and was seriously angry about it. But Reuben had correctly calculated on my father's good nature and disinclination to act. Reuben knew that my father would only growl; he knew he would never turn him out.