"I've got a son," the secretary pondered to himself, "but I'll be hanged if I feel about him like that. I suppose it's because I never lost him."
"Tad's applied to me for a job," the father informed Tom in the limousine one day. "The next thing will be to make him stick to it."
"I believe I could manage that, once we get him there," Tom said confidently. "I can't always make him drink, but I can hold his head to the water. I did that at college more than once."
"I know you did. I can't tell you...."
A tremor of the voice cut short this sentence, but Tom knew what would have been said: "I can't tell you what it means to me now to have some one to fall back upon. The children have given me a good deal of worry which their mother couldn't share because of her unhappiness. But now—I've got you." Tom was glad, however, that it had not been put into words.
XLVI
They came into May, the joyous, exciting, stimulating May of New York, with its laughing promise of adventure. To Tom Whitelaw that sense of adventure was in the happy sunlight, in the blue sky, in the scudding clouds, in winds that were warm and yet with the tang of salt and ice in them, in the flowers in the Park, in the gay dresses in the Avenue, in the tall young men already beginning to look summery, in the shop windows with their flowers, fruit, jewels, porcelains, and brocades, in the opulent crush of vehicles, and in his own heart most of all. Never before had he known such ecstasy of life. It was more than vigor of limb or the strong coursing of the blood. It was youth and love and expectation, with their call to the daring, the reckless, and the new.
They reached a Saturday. Business was taking Whitelaw to Boston. Tom went with him to the station, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his ticket, to check his bags, and perform the other small services of a clerk for the man of importance.