"Sidney," he said, reaching out his thin hand to his son as he entered, "you must not mind my giving up. I have been trying hard to keep strong, for your sake, but the effort has tired me out, boy."
"Courage! I shall see you hale and hearty yet."
"No, Sid, it's a break up for ever. What a miserable, selfish old fellow I have been all my life! You will get on better in the world without me—only yourself to think of and care for then."
"Only myself!" echoed Sidney, gloomily.
The poor old gentleman would have offered more of this sort of consolation had not Sidney stopped him. It was a cruel philosophy, against which the son's heart protested. Sid was a man to attempt consolation, but not capable of receiving it. His austerity had placed him, as he thought, beyond it, and his father's efforts only stabbed him more keenly to the quick.
Sidney tried to believe that his father's deliberate preparation was a whim occasioned by some passing weakness, but the truth forced its way despite him, sat down before him, haunted his dreams, would not be thought away. The doctor gave no hopes; the physician whom he called in only confirmed the doctor's verdict; it was a truth from which there was no escape.
When he gave up reasoning against his own convictions, Sidney gave up his clerkship, as suddenly, and with as little warning as he had vacated his stool in his uncle's counting-house.
There was a choice to make between hard work day and night at the new banking scheme—isolated completely from his dying father—and attendance, close and unremitting, to that father who had loved him truly and well, and Sidney did not hesitate.
"Afterwards, I can think of myself," he said; "let me brighten the days that are left you, to the best of my power."
"Ah! but the future?" said the father, anxious concerning his son's position in life.