o
bring the children together, if not quite under one roof, then to points
not so far separated from each other but that a speaking acquaintance
might be developed. Tom was the farthest away, and he was the dearest;
the only Hamilton of the lot; the only one who loved his father.

Mr. Hamilton leaned forward abstractedly, and fumbling through one
drawer of his desk after another succeeded in bringing out a photograph
of Tom, taken at seventeen or eighteen. Then by a little extra search he
found his wife in her presentation dress at a foreign court. There was
no comfort or companionship in that, it was too furbelowed to be
anybody's wife,--but underneath it in the same frame was one taken just
after their marriage. That was too full of memories to hold much joy,
but it stirred his heart, and made it beat a little; enough at any rate
to show it was not dead. In the letter case in his vest pocket was an
almost forgotten picture of the girls when they were children. This with
the others he stood in a row in front of him, reminding himself that he
did not know the subjects much more intimately than the photographers
who had made their likenesses. He glanced from one family to the other
and back again, several times. The Careys were handsomer, there was no
doubt of that; but there was a deeper difference that eluded him. The
Hamiltons were far more stylishly dressed, but they all looked a little
conscious and a little discontented. That was it; the Careys were
happier! There were six of them, living in the forgotten Hamilton house
in a half-deserted village, on five or six hundred dollars a year, and
doing their own housework, and they were happier than his own brood,
spending forty or fifty times that sum. Well, they were grown up, his
sons and daughters, and the only change in their lives now would come
from wise or unwise marriages. No poverty-stricken sons-in-law would
ever come into the family, with Mrs. Hamilton standing at the bars, he
was sure of that! As for the boys, they might choose their mates in
Texas or China; they might even have chosen them now, for aught he knew,
though Jack was only twenty-six and Tom twenty-two. He must write to
them oftener, all of them, no matter how busy and anxious he might be;
especially to Tom, who was so far away.

He drew a sheet of paper towards him, and having filled it, another, and
yet another. Having folded and slipped it into an envelope and addressed
it to Thomas Hamilton,