Burke sprang to his feet and began to pace up and down the wide veranda. (From boyhood Burke had always "thrashed things out" on his feet.) For a full minute now he said nothing. Then, abruptly, he stopped and wheeled about. His face was very white.
"Dad, I can't. It seems too much like—like—"
"No, it isn't in the least like quitting, or running away," supplied John Denby, reading unerringly his son's hesitation. "You're not quitting at all. I'm asking you to go. Indeed, I'm begging you to go, Burke. I want you. I need you. I'm not an old man, I know; but I feel like one. These last two years have not been—er—a bed of roses for me, either." In spite of a certain lightness in his words, the man's voice shook a little. "I don't think you know, boy, how your old dad has—missed you."
"Don't I? I can—guess." Burke wheeled and resumed his nervous stride. The words, as he flung them out, were at once a challenge and an admission. "But—Helen—" He stopped short, waiting.
"I've answered that. I've told you. Helen needs a rest and a change."
Again to the distraught husband's ears came the echo of a woman's wailing—"Maybe you think I ain't tired of working and pinching and slaving—"
"Then you don't think Helen will feel that I'm running away?" A growing hope was in his eyes, but his brow still carried its frown of doubt.
"Not if she has a check for—ten thousand dollars," replied John Denby, a bit grimly.
Burke winced. A painful red reached his forehead.
"It is, indeed, a large sum, sir,—too large," he resented, with sudden stiffness. "Thank you; but I'm afraid we can't accept it, after all."