I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the roadside trees in the evening wind. I endeavored to reassure him, with such success that in a few moments the old weak smile appeared on his benevolent face.
“Why?”—But the look of interrogation was succeeded by a hopeless blankness.
“Why?” I repeated with assuring accents.
“Why,” he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over his face, “is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean, casting a flood of light o’er hill and dale, like—Why,” he repeated, with a feeble smile, “is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean”—He hesitated,—stammered,—and gazed at me hopelessly, with the tears dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.
I took his hand kindly in my own. “Casting a shadow o’er hill and dale,” I repeated quietly, leading him up to the subject, “like—Come, now.”
“Ah!” he said, pressing my hand tremulously, “you know it?”
“I do. Why is it like—the—eh—the commodious mansion on the Limehouse Road?”
A blank stare only followed. He shook his head sadly.
“Like the young men wanted for a light, genteel employment?”
He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.