ught they knew what he meant. He had eaten his food within
restraining walls, probably in silence, and to take up the kind
ceremonial of common life was too much for him. Anne poured him another
cup of coffee.

"Seen Jim Reardon?" Jeffrey asked his father.

Anne and Lydia could scarcely forbear another glance at him. Here was
Reardon, the evil influence behind him, too soon upon the scene. They
would not have had his name mentioned until it should be brought out in
Jeffrey's vindication.

"No," said the colonel. "Alston Choate called."

"I wonder what Reardon's doing now?" Jeffrey asked.

But his father did not know.

Jeffrey finished rapidly, and then leaned back in his chair, looked out
of the window and forgot them all. Lydia felt one of her disproportioned
indignations. She was afraid the colonel was not going to have the
beautiful time with him their hopes had builded. The colonel looked
older still than he had an hour ago.

"What shall we do, my son?" he asked. "Go for a walk--in the orchard?"

A walk in the street suddenly occurred to him as the wrong thing to
offer a man returned to the battery of curious eyes.

"If you like," said Jeffrey indifferently. "Do you take one after
breakfast?"

He spoke as if it were entirely for his father, and Anne and Lydia
wondered, Anne in her kind way and the other hotly, how he could forget
that all their passionate interests were for him alone.

"Not necessarily," said the colonel. They were rising. "I was thinking
of you--my son."

"What makes you call me that?" Jeffrey asked curiously.

They were in the hall now, looking out beyond the great sun patch on the
floor, to the lilac trees.

"What did I call you?"

"Son. You never used to."

Lydia felt she couldn't be quick enough in teaching him how dull he was.

"He calls you so because he's done it in his mind," she said, "for years
and years. Your name wasn't enough. Farvie felt so--affectionate."

The last word sounded silly to her, and her cheeks were so hot they
seemed to scald her eyes and melt out tears in them. Jeffrey gave her a
little quizzical look, and slipped his arm through his father's. Anne,
at the look, was suddenly relieved. He must have some soft emotions, she
thought, behind the scowl.

"Don't you like it?" the colonel asked him. He straightened consciously
under the touch of his son's arm.

"Oh, yes," said Jeffrey. "I like it. Only you never had. Except in
letters. Come in here and