The more she thought of it in the days that followed,—and she seemed to be thinking pretty much all the time of the old man and the look on his face as he stood before the picture,—the more convinced she became that he was sorry and did not know how to say so.
“And he ought not to have to say so,” she told herself. “He’s an old, old man, and he ought not to have to say that he is sorry.”
The old, old man—aged sixty-five—might have taken exception to that part of her proposition touching his extreme antiquity, but we may be pretty sure that he would have cordially endorsed her opinion that the dignity of his years forbade his saying that he was sorry.
In those days Di used to walk often 251 past her grandfather’s house. It was a very big house for a single occupant. Even the stout footman, whom she had once seen at the door, did not seem stout enough, nor numerous enough to relieve the big house of its vacancy. There were heavy woollen draperies in the parlor windows, but not a hint of the pretty white muslin which a woman would have had up in no time. Once she passed the house just at dusk, after the lights were lighted. Through the long windows she looked into the empty room. Not so much as a cat or a dog was awaiting the master. In the swift glance with which she swept the interior she noted that the fireplace was boarded in. That seemed to Di indescribably dreary. Perhaps her grandfather did not sit here; perhaps he had a library somewhere, like their own. But, no; there was the portly footman entering with the evening paper, which he laid upon the table before coming to close the shutters.
“He’s too old to say he is sorry,” Di said to herself, as she turned dejectedly 252 away; “a great deal too old—and lonely—and dreary!”
And it was on that very evening that she made her little petition to her mother, and that her father declared that Di was sure to bag her game.
Old Mr. Crosby, meanwhile, was too well-used to his empty house and to his boarded-in fireplace to mind them very much, too unaccustomed to muslin curtains to miss them. Yet he had not been on very good terms with himself for the past few weeks, and that was something which he did mind particularly.
The result of his long cogitation in front of the grandfather picture had been highly uncomplimentary to the artist. He pronounced the homespun subject unworthy of artistic treatment, and he told himself that it merited just that order of criticism which it had received at the hands of the young person with the rather pretty turn of countenance, who had regarded it with such enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he did not forget the picture,—nor yet the young person! 253
It was the afternoon of Thanksgiving day, and there was a light fall of snow outside. He remembered that in old times there used always to be a lot of snow on Thanksgiving day. Things were very different in old times. He wondered what would have been thought of a man fifty years ago,—or seventeen years ago, for the matter of that,—who was giving his servants a holiday and dining at the club. As if those foreign servants had any concern in the Yankee festival! But then, what concern had he, Horatio Crosby, in it nowadays? What had he to be thankful for? Whom had he to be thankful with? He was very lucky to have a club to go to! He might as well go now, though it was still two or three hours to dinner time. He would ring for his overcoat and snow-shoes.
His hand was on the bell-rope—for Mr. Horatio Crosby was old-fashioned, and had never yet admitted an electric button to his domain.