His father laughed, simply because Archie laughed. “I don’t know about the fun of it,” he said; “for, Archie lad, your growing a man will result in my getting old. Don’t you see?”
Archie turned his handsome brown face towards the fire, and gazed at it—or rather into it—for a few moments thoughtfully. Then he gave his head a little negative kind of a shake, and, still looking towards the fire as if addressing it, replied:
“No, no, no; I don’t see it. Other boys’ fathers may grow old; mine won’t, mine couldn’t, never, never.”
“Dad,” said a voice from the corner. It was a very weary, rather feeble, voice. The owner of it occupied a kind of invalid couch, on which he half sat and half reclined—a lad of only nine years, with a thin, pale, old-fashioned face, and big, dark, dreamy eyes that seemed to look you through and through as you talked to him.
“Dad.”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Wouldn’t you like to be old really?”
“Wel—,” the father was beginning.
“Oh,” the boy went on, “I should dearly love to be old, very old, and very wise, like one of these!” Here his glance reverted to a story-book he had been reading, and which now lay on his lap.
His father and mother were used to the boy’s odd remarks. Both parents sat here to-night, and both looked at him with a sort of fond pity; but the child’s eyes had half closed, and presently he dropped out of the conversation, and to all intents and purposes out of the company.