He opened his eyes with a jerk. "Eh? What's that, what's that, what's that? Tut, tut! Must have dozed off. What's that?" The eyes tried to close again, but he was firm with them, and presently recognized his daughter. "That you, Dollykins? Well, well, well! Come down to pay Dad a visit, eh? That's nice, that's nice!"
Suddenly he got to his feet and brought her a chair, reaching at the same time for his coat. Richard Darcy could not possibly have remained in a lady's presence coatless, no matter what the temperature. Her attention was caught by the garment into which he struggled, muttering apologies the while.
"Why, Dad," she cried, "what are you putting on?"
It was not the immaculate gray flannel in which he had started that morning for the marts of commerce, but a thread-bare, shapeless, densely spotted garment which Joan recognized with a pang.
"Your old second-best!" she exclaimed.
Her father grinned a little sheepishly. "Why—why yes, I keep it here as an office coat, to save the others, you see. I'm sort of used to it," he added explanatorily. "It seems to fit into my curves. The new ones don't. One is supposed to fit into theirs!"
Joan patted the sleeve of the second-best affectionately. Her eyes were moist. She felt nearer to her father than she had for weeks. He had kept the old chair out of their home equipment; he had kept the old coat. Was he after all not so obliviously content as he seemed in his fine new surroundings? Did he remember, too, and was he homesick as herself for the shabby days when he and she and her mother had made a little world of their own, happy in spite of everything?
She said with a smile, "You'd better not let Effie May catch you wearing such a garment!"
"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed. "I may confess that it was with some difficulty I rescued this coat from the ashman, to whom your mother had given it."
But his use of the phrase, "your mother," hardened Joan out of her momentary tenderness. Invariably he spoke of Effie May to her as "your mother," and of her real mother only as "Mary." The girl was too young to realize that this may have been because the name meant things to him which the phrase never would. Mary was something more to Richard Darcy than Joan's mother....