I clasped his hand without reply. My heart melted to hear that tender accent, so familiar once. All was happening for the best, if it only gave me back David.
"Now good-bye—I must be off."
"Whither?" said my father, rousing himself.
"To try and save the house and the tan-yard—I fear we must give up the mill. No, don't hold me, Phineas. I run no risk: everybody knows me. Besides, I am young. There! see after your father. I shall come back in good time."
He grasped my hands warmly—then unloosed them; and I heard his step descending the staircase. The room seemed to darken when he went away.
The evening passed very slowly. My father, exhausted with pain, lay on the bed and dozed. I sat watching the sky over the housetops, which met in the old angles, with the same blue peeps between. I half forgot all the day's events—it seemed but two weeks, instead of two years ago, that John and I had sat in this attic-window, conning our Shakspeare for the first time.
Ere twilight I examined John's room. It was a good deal changed; the furniture was improved; a score of ingenious little contrivances made the tiny attic into a cosy bed-chamber. One corner was full of shelves, laden with books, chiefly of a scientific and practical nature. John's taste did not lead him into the current literature of the day: Cowper, Akenside, and Peter Pindar were alike indifferent to him. I found among his books no poet but Shakspeare.
He evidently still practised his old mechanical arts. There was lying in the window a telescope—the cylinder made of pasteboard—into which the lenses were ingeniously fitted. A rough telescope-stand, of common deal, stood on the ledge of the roof, from which the field of view must have been satisfactory enough to the young astronomer. Other fragments of skilful handiwork, chiefly meant for machinery on a Lilliputian scale, were strewn about the floor; and on a chair, just as he had left it that morning, stood a loom, very small in size, but perfect in its neat workmanship, with a few threads already woven, making some fabric not so very unlike cloth.
I had gone over all these things without noticing that my father was awake, and that his sharp eye had observed them likewise.
"The lad works hard," said he, half to himself. "He has useful hands and a clear head." I smiled, but took no notice whatever.