Tembarom's grin was at once boyish and ashamed.
“Well, it is in one way,” he answered, “and it isn't in another. The fellows at school got into the way of calling me that way,—to save time, I guess,—and I got to like it. They'd have guyed my real name. Most of them never knew it. I can't see why any one ever called a child by such a fool name, anyhow.”
“What was it exactly?”
Tembarom looked almost sheepish.
“It sounds like a thing in a novel. It was Temple Temple Barholm. Two Temples, by gee! As if one wasn't enough!”
Joseph Hutchinson dropped his paper and almost started from his chair. His red face suddenly became so much redder that he looked a trifle apoplectic.
“Temple Barholm does tha say?” he cried out.
Mr. Palford raised his hand and checked him, but with a suggestion of stiff apology.
“If you will kindly allow me. Did you ever hear your father refer to a place called Temple Barholm?” he inquired.
Tembarom reflected as though sending his thoughts backward into a pretty thoroughly forgotten and ignored past. There had been no reason connected with filial affection which should have caused him to recall memories of his father. They had not liked each other. He had known that he had been resented and looked down upon as a characteristically American product. His father had more than once said he was a “common American lad,” and he had known he was.