The altar fire by A.C. Benson

I went to see Darell, my old schoolfellow, a few days ago; he wrote to say that he would much like to see me, but that he was ill and unable to leave home -- could I possibly come to see him?

I have never seen very much of him since I left Cambridge; but there I was a good deal in his company -- and we have kept up our friendship ever since, in the quiet way in which Englishmen do keep up their friendships, meeting perhaps two or three times in the year, exchanging letters occasionally. He was not a very intimate friend -- indeed, he was not a man who formed intimacies; but he was a congenial companion enough. He was a frankly ambitious man. He went to the bar, where he has done well; he married a wife with some money; and I think his ultimate ambition has been to enter Parliament. He told me, when I last saw him, that he had now, he thought, made enough money for this, and that he would probably stand at the next election. I have always liked his wife, who is a sensible, good-natured woman, with social ambitions.