The father soon felt himself an interloper in the business he himself had founded. And drink did not aid either his work therein nor his usefulness to the firm.
Wherefore he had eagerly seized upon his son’s tactful suggestion that the senior member retire from active business and receive a small yearly income from the concern’s revenues.
For the past twelve years he had lived thus; working not at all save daily in the garden plot that surrounded a cottage he occupied on the lower, or river, end of Main Street; a cottage that had belonged to his mother and that was renovated for his use.
Here, tended by an aged negro—a former slave—ex-Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton rotted his years away; while at the far end of town, in the new residence, or “Hill” section, dwelt his son, his son’s wife, and their only child—the little grandson who had been born a few months before Brinton’s return from Mexico.
Through all those early nightmare times it had been this little grandson who formed James Brinton’s one worthy hold on life. He adored the child; and from the beginning, the dissolute human wreck had commanded from the youngster a greater and more complete love than did both the baby’s highly correct parents combined.
Grandfather and grandson had ever been inseparable—to the hopeless horror of the boy’s mother, who dared not for appearances’ sake prohibit the intimacy—and had found in each other an exhaustless fund of truly marvelous and worshipful traits.
From babyhood, the child, for some reason known to himself, had utterly eschewed the stately title of “Grandfather” or even the milder term “Grandpapa,” and had called Brinton “Dad.” His own male parent he always addressed decorously as “Father,” but his grandfather was invariably and lovingly “Dad.”
The quaint term from a child toward a grandsire had “caught the town.” Before many years, half the nine thousand inhabitants of Ideala were hailing, or referring to, Brinton as “Dad.” The phrase seemed to go aptly with his disreputable yet lovably patriarchal personality.
And “Dad” had long since become fixed upon him as a permanent nickname.
Since the name had originated with his grandson, Brinton willingly accepted it. His own son was perhaps the sole acquaintance who never used it toward him.