"Don't talk in that way about kindness. I should be an ungrateful brute if I did not mean it. You can judge how I feel when I tell you that if my son had lived I would have him just like you;" and there was moisture in his eyes as he stretched out his hand and wrung mine impulsively.
That he was in earnest it seemed impossible to doubt. He sat looking at me steadily for a while and then surprised me. He leant forward and fixed his eyes on mine. "I want to ask you a question. Are you sure you have never seen me before?"
Rosa's warning flashed across my thoughts. This might be a trap; so I returned his look with equal steadiness and shook my head. "I don't recollect it, sir."
"Try to think. Try hard. Look back over the years to when you were a boy."
Of course I "tried," and equally of course failed.
He dropped back in his chair with a sigh which seemed to breathe the essence of sincere regret, and after a moment said with almost equal earnestness:
"You know all I have said to you; you believe it, believe that I am really a friend to you?"
"Of course, sir. No one could speak as you have otherwise," I replied, smiling. It was a queer question.
"Then, believing it, is there anything you would care to tell me?"
What the dickens did this mean? I smothered my doubts under another smile and then nodded. "There is one thing, sir." His face lighted and he was all expectation and interest on the instant.