“All of them?”
“Yes, I—I had forgotten which was your favorite.” The old man would not look at his son. Presently he finished: “I'll read the Post. Come, my son.”
They went up-stairs. Tommy tried to read. He looked at all the papers, but not even the football gossip held his attention. From time to time he looked up, to see his father absorbed in the editorial page of the Post. This was evidently a part of his daily routine. Tommy saw him sitting all alone in the gloomy little room called the library, because it had been so christened by his mother long years before. Day in and day out the old man had sat in this room, alone with his thoughts, with the consciousness of loving vows kept at such a cost!
“Father!” irrepressibly cried Tommy.
“Yes?” said Mr. Leigh, emotionlessly. Even in the way in which he laid down his paper on his lap there was that curious leisureliness of senility that somehow savored less of age-feebleness than of years and years of unchanging habit.
“I am going to bed. I want to feel particularly fit to-morrow.” Tommy stood there waiting for something, he knew not what exactly—something that might give him the emotional relief he was not fully conscious he needed.
“Good night, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, and resumed his newspaper.