“He would be almost like another prodigal,” smiled Barnes.
“Only,” she objected, “father has not wasted his substance in riotous living.”
“That isn’t what makes the prodigal,” answered Barnes. “The prodigal needn’t be really prodigal. It’s the journey away from home into the far country that makes the prodigal.”
“You take great liberty with the Scriptures,” snapped Aunt Philomela more to relieve her feelings than anything else.
“Like every artist,” answered Barnes unruffled, “I have learned the Bible almost by heart. Do you remember what the father exclaimed when he saw his son?”
Aunt Philomela pretended to resume her knitting.
“Perhaps you can quote it,” suggested Barnes.
“Perhaps you will,” put in the girl to save her aunt’s feelings.
“He said,” resumed Barnes, slowly. “He said, ‘This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and he is found.’ Nothing about riotous living. The boy had gone away and came back again. That was all that counted. That is all that will count when Mr. Van Patten comes back from the darkness to you.”
So in his own life, he thought, his father was as much the prodigal as he, the son, was. But he said nothing of this.