“What do you mean, sonny?”
“Nothing. I’m going to get Joe back now if I have to go to Alaska for him, that’s all.”
It was no easy matter to keep Barnes, Sr., in New York during the following week, but for that matter it was no easy matter for Barnes himself to stay. But he couldn’t leave until he had settled this other affair, and his father refused even to visit the old farm without him. In the meanwhile, too, Mr. Van Patten became insistent. He had been able to see his daughter and sister for the first time in three years, and now was eager almost to the point of petulance to see his son. He could not understand why the boy couldn’t come down for a day at least. It was becoming more and more difficult to quiet him. The girl showed plainly enough in her letters the distress under which they all labored. Matters were fast reaching a crisis.
It was at this point that he received the wire from Eleanor.
“Joe on way home. Don’t know when he will get here. You’d better come back if you can.”
Come back? Nothing else counted. He found his mother in her dressing-room kneeling before a trunk filled with old letters.
“Mother,” he whispered, “I take the next train for Chester.”
She looked up with moist eyes.
“Give her—my love,” she said.
“But mother—”