CHAPTER XII
After her sister's death, Miss Drayton went with a cousin for a quiet summer in the Adirondacks. Before leaving, she had meant to talk to her brother-in-law about Anne, to tell him of her sister's wish to keep the child, and to say that she herself would take charge of the little orphan. But she was so tired! Life seemed very empty and yet she shrank from any new responsibility. So day after day passed, and she went away without saying a word about Anne. After all, it would be time enough, she thought, when the children were brought back to America.
In his great new loneliness, Mr. Patterson's heart turned more than ever to his son; and he put aside business engagements and went, by the swiftest boat and the fastest train, to join Pat in Paris and bring him home.
Father and son met with a formal but hearty handshake.
"Howdy, dad."
"Hello, son. How's your health?"
The French man-servant, looking on at this greeting, shrugged his shoulders. "My son and I would have given the kiss and the embrace," he commented to himself. "But they—how very American!"
'Very American' they both were. Mr. Patterson was a slim, alert business man, with a firm chin cleft in the middle, mouth hidden by a tawny, drooping mustache, deep-set gray eyes under a broad brow from which the brown hair was rapidly receding at the temples. Pat had his father's cleft chin, straight nose, and square forehead; but his mouth curved like his mother's and like hers were the hazel eyes and curly dark hair. He was a sturdy, well-set-up young American, who played good football and excellent baseball and studied fairly well—not that he had any deep interest in books, for he meant to be a business man like his father, but his mother wished him to get good reports and a certain class-standing was necessary to keep from being debarred sports.
Mr. Patterson was glad that Pat liked his school, glad that he did not like it so well as to regret going home. "After all, there is nothing like an American school for an American boy," he said.