After he had gone Dr. Sanford gave his chuckle such full vent that it broke into an explosion little short of a snort.
"I suppose there is something of the anarchist in me," he said; "but I confess to liking to see a self-conscious, self-made millionaire a trifle miserable, without, I trust, in the least compromising my standing as a good Christian."
"Peter was certainly funny," assented Mrs. Sanford, smiling now.
Then they forget Peter, these three. They forget everything but the fact that they were together. The detail of their talk Phil could hardly have recollected the next day, but every sentence of it came to him when he was prostrate in that noiseless and sightless world in France.
After the proud old pair were under the coverlets that night their theme was the same that it had been a thousand times. Following generations of professors, doctors, and lawyers had come the man of action. Philip had succeeded out in that forbidding world of business and strife: this was the wonderful thing to them.
"He's changed," said the mother.
"Three years older," said the father. "The world has humanised him, made him fonder of us."
"And didn't you think that he looked more like our ancestor?" Mrs. Sanford always referred to the man in the square as "ours."
"Yes, the old blood. Action reappears and likeness of feature. What relation are those two Ribot girls? I was trying to think."
"About seventeenth," said Mrs. Sanford dreamily.