"Then you absolutely insist on wallowing in this filth until morning?"
"I do!"
Again I withdrew.
So the weary hours of the night dragged slowly on. In front of the blazing fire indoors my mind constantly reverted to that cold and cheerless underground cell in which Gran'pa was doing voluntary penance for his misdeeds. I thought also of the morrow when he and Nanny were going to leave us for ever. Molly, too, claimed my worried attention. Poor little Molly! She would lose a playmate. Since Gran'pa's rejuvenescence he and Molly had been the closest of chums. They had motor-scooted; they had climbed trees; they had met as equals in the great world of juvenile fiction which littered Molly's "sanctum." In short, Gran'pa had been to her that elder brother for whom she had craved since almost the first day when she could walk and talk.
And now this was to be the end—a wretched quarrel, an estrangement, a stumbling away of Gran'pa into the big dark world, which lay beyond what had been the brightest little home in Airesdale Avenue. . . .
Even as I pondered on this scurvy trick of Fate's, I heard a distinct bump on the ceiling overhead. Then the patter of bare feet and a voice calling to me from the head of the stairs.
"Daddy!"
I darted to the door.
"Yes?"
"My throat's dry. . . . I feel so thirsty!"