"Yes, Dick--and the bank!"
"Oh-h!" he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it all.
XXV
"Ah, Mr. Ward, ah! Heh! Won't you sit down, sir, won't you sit down?"
Hunter had risen from his low hollow chair, and now stood bowing, or rather stooping automatically to a posture lower than was customary with him. The day before or that afternoon, Ward would have noticed Hunter's advancing senility. The old banker stood bent before his deep, well-worn green chair, its bottom sagging almost to the floor. He had on large, loose slippers and a long faded gown. The light glistened on his head, entirely bald, and fell in bright patches on the lean, yellow face that was wrinkled in a smile,--but a smile that expressed nothing, not even mirth. He stood there, uncertainly, almost apologetically, making some strange noise in his throat like a chuckle, or like a cough. His tongue moved restlessly along his thin lips. In his left hand he held a cigar, stuck on a toothpick.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Ward, won't you sit down, sir?"
The old banker, after striving for this effect of hospitality, lowered himself carefully into his own deep chair. Ward seated himself across the hearth, and looked at the shabby figure, huddled in its shabby chair, in the midst of all the richness and luxury of that imposing library. About the walls were magnificent bookcases in mahogany, and behind their little leaded panes of glass were rows of morocco bindings. On the walls were paintings, and all about, in the furniture, the rugs, the bric-à-brac, was the display of wealth that had learned to refine itself. And yet, in the whole room nothing expressed the character of that aged and withered man, save the shabby green chair he sat in, the shabby gown and slippers he wore, and the economical toothpick to make his cigar last longer. Ward remembered to have heard Elizabeth and her mother--in some far removed and happy day before this thing had come upon him--speak of the difficulty Mrs. Hunter and Agnes Hunter had with the old man; he must have been intractable, he had resisted to the end and evidently come off victorious, for here he sat with the trophies of his victory, determined to have his own way. And yet Ward, who was not given to speculations of the mental kind, did not think of these things. At another time Hunter might have impressed him sadly as an old man; but not now; this night he was feeling very old himself.
"I presume, Mr. Hunter," Ward began, "that you imagined the object of my visit when I telephoned you an hour ago."
"Oh, yes, sir, yes, Mr. Ward. You came to see me about that boy of yours!"
"Exactly," said Ward, and he felt his cheek flush.