"I haven't for a year or so." He was shamefaced over it. "The fact is—Jeff, I'm nothing but a malingerer. I thought—my heart—"
"Very wise," said Jeffrey, his eyes half-closed in a luxurious lighting up. "Very wise indeed. But just to-night—don't you think you'd better have a whiff to-night?" The colonel shook his head, but Jeff sent out an advance signal of blue smoke. "Where is it?" said he.
"Oh, I suppose it's in my bureau drawer," said the colonel, with impatience. "Left hand. I kept it; I don't know why."
"Yes," said Jeffrey. "Of course you kept your pipe."
He ran softly upstairs, opening and shutting doors with an admirable quiet, and put his hand on the old briarwood. From Anne's room he heard a low crooning. She was awake then, but with mind at ease or she wouldn't sing like that. He could imagine how Lydia had dropped off to sleep, like a burden of sweet fragrances cast on the bosom of the night, an unfinished prayer babbled on her lips. But to think of Lydia now was to look trouble in the face, and he returned to his father not so thoroughly in the spirit of a specious gaiety. It did him good, though, to see the colonel's fingers close on the old pipe, with a motion of the thumb, indicating a resumed habit, caressing a smooth, warm boss. The colonel soberly but luxuriously lighted up, and they sat and puffed a while in silence. Jeffrey drew up a chair for his father's feet and another for his own.
"What's your idea," he said,' at length, "of Weedon Moore?"
The colonel took his pipe out and replaced it.
"Rather a dirty fellow, wasn't he?"
"Yes. That is, in college."
"What d' he do?"