Andrew read no further. Half an hour later he was driving for King's
Cross as fast as a cab could take him.

CHAPTER IX

It was characteristic of Andrew's serviceable and soundly unimaginative
intellect that it should decline to grasp such a phenomenon as a father
who was rapidly approaching his own age. It accepted the fact, since the
evidence was now becoming overwhelming, but it firmly refused to go an
inch beyond this concession. If one were seriously to regard his conduct
as the natural result of youth and high spirits, there would be in a
kind of way an excuse for it; and once you started that line of
reasoning, where were you? You would be pardoning beggars because they
were hungry, and bankrupts because they had no money, and all kinds of
things. Andrew's conceptions of justice were not to be tampered with
like that. It therefore followed (since he was extremely logical) that
his parent must be looked upon simply as an erring and impenitent man.
His age did not matter. That was his business. His son's was to see
that, whether Mr. Heriot Walkingshaw professed to be eighty or eighteen,
he conducted himself in a manner befitting the head of so respectable a
family and firm.

The only defect in this pre-eminently honest way of regarding the matter
was that it handicapped the junior partner when it came to forecasting
his parent's probable movements. If you persist in basing your
calculations on the assumption that a bird _ought_ to be too old to fly,
when it actually isn't, you will probably be wrong in expecting to find
it always in your garden.

Andrew let himself into the house about the hour of 8:30 a. m., and
almost fell into the arms of the agitated widow.

"Have you found him? Where is he? What has happened?" she implored him.

It was another of Andrew's wholesome peculiarities that, having once
distrusted a person, his suspicions could hardly be allayed, even by
evidence that would have satisfied a hypochondriacal ex-detective. This
safeguard against deception effectually preserved him from the dangerous
extremes both of indigence and greatness. He looked upon his second
cousin with a shocked and doubtful eye. She had come very close. Did she
expect _him_ to toy with her?

"Have I found who?" he inquired coldly.

"Heriot!"

"If you mean my father, I did not find him."

He looked at her sarcastically, and added, "He didn't mention that
himself, of course?"

"I haven't seen him!" she a