Around him on the floor lay countless burned matches, a pipe or two which scattered tobacco. The floor itself was covered layers deep with the ruins of two Sunday papers—at which form of journalism Horace Brooks openly scoffed, but none the less ruthlessly devoured after his own fashion each Sabbath afternoon.
He sat with his bearded chin sunk in his shirt bosom, his mild blue eye seeing nothing at all, his hands idle in his lap. He was concluding his Sabbath as usually he did, in the midst of the scenes surrounding his daily toil throughout the week. He started at the sound of Aurora Lane's knock on the door.
"Come in!" he called.
He supposed it was some young lawyer from one of the offices down the hall, where struggling students, or clerks from the abstract offices, sometimes brought knotty problems for him to solve. These folk still lived in the rear of their offices—as indeed Horace Brooks but recently had done himself. A disorderly couch still might have been found in the room beyond, fragments of soap, a soiled towel or so, a broken comb, a sidelong mirror—traces of his own humble and arduous beginnings in the law.
But he turned half about now, and dropped his feet to the floor as he heard the rustle of a gown. He sat half leaning forward as Aurora Lane entered. He had small training in the social usages—he did not always rise when a woman entered the room, unless some special reason for that act existed. So he sat for just a time, and looked at her, the fact of her presence seeming slowly to filter into his brain. Then quickly he stood and went forward to her, his rare smile illuminating his homely features.
"Come in," said he. "Will you be seated? Why have you come here?" He was simple and direct of habit.
Aurora Lane looked at him not only with the eyes of a client, but with the eyes of a woman. She saw plainly the quick look of eagerness, the swift hopefulness which came into his eyes.
But she must forestall all that. "Mr. Brooks," said she, "I've come to you for help—I need your professional services."
He sat looking at her gravely for some time, the light in his face slowly fading away. "Help?" said he. "As how?" He was of the plain people, and at times lapsed into the colloquial inelegancies of his early life. But he needed little divination now to know that Aurora Lane came to him for no personal reasons that offered him any hope.
"It's about my boy," said Aurora. "You know—Don."