keen as ever, saw in the
girl's half-rebellious, half-deferential attitude an impatient
expectation of his usual irritation, and so he merely pointed a shaking
finger at the clock. His silence was far more eloquent and effective
than his old-fashioned platitudes. He smiled as he saw her surprise,
indicated a chair and gave her the morning paper. "Go ahead, my dear,"
he said.

Sitting bolt upright, with her back to the shaded light, her charming
profile with its little blunt nose and rounded chin thrown up against
the dark glistening oak of an old armoire, Joan began to read. Her
clear, high voice seemed to startle the dead beasts whose heads hung
thickly around the room and bring into their wide, fixed eyes a look of
uneasiness.

Several logs were burning sulkily in the great open fireplace, throwing
out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an old and pompous
clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of the birds beyond the
closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedale with its chin on the
head of a lion came intermittently.

They made a picture, these two, that fitted with peculiar rightness
into the mood of Nature at that moment. Youth was king, and with all
his followers had clambered over winter and seized the earth. The red
remainders of autumn were almost over-powered. Standing with his hands
behind him and his back to the fire, the old sportsman listened, with a
queer, distrait expression, to the girl's reading. That he was still
putting up a hard fight against relentless Time was proved by his
clothes, which were those of a country-lover who dressed the part with
care. A tweed shooting-coat hung from his broad, gaunt shoulders.
Well-cut riding breeches, skin tight below his knees, ran into a pair
of brown top-boots that shone like glass. A head and shoulders taller
than the average tall man, his back was bent and his chest hollow. His
thin hair, white as cotton wool, was touched with brilliantine, and his
handsome face, deeply lined and wrinkled, was as closely shaved as an
actor's after three o'clock. His sunken eyes, overshadowed by bushy
brows, had lost their fire. He could no longer see to read. He too
heard the call without, and when he looked at the young, sweet thing
upon whom he was dependent for the news, and glanced about the room so
full of memories of his own departed youth, he said to himself with
more bitterness than usual: "I'm old; I'm very old, and helpless; life
has no use