As no answer came, he was forced to look up after a time, and then upon the instant he realized that his pathos had been wasted, for Mrs. Minster’s face did not betray the emotion he had anticipated. She seemed to have been thinking of something else.
“Have you seen any Bermuda potatoes in the market yet?” she asked. “It’s about time for them, isn’t it?”
“I’ll ask my father,” Horace replied, determined not to be thrown off the trail. “He has been in the West Indies a good deal, and he knows all about their vegetables, and the seasons, and so on. It is about him that I wish to speak, Mrs. Minster.”
The lady nodded her head, and drew down the comers of her mouth a little.
“I feel the homeless condition of the General very much,” Horace went on. “The death of my mother was a terrible blow to him, one he has never recovered from.”
Mrs. Minster had heard differently, but she nodded her head again in sympathy with this new view. Horace had not been mistaken in believing that filial affection was good in her eyes.
“So he has lived all these years almost alone in the big house,” the son proceeded, “and the solitary life has affected his spirits, weakened his ambition, relaxed his regard for the part he ought to play in the community. Since I have been back, he has brightened up a good deal. He has been a most loving father to me always, and I would do anything in the world to contribute to his happiness. It is borne in upon me more and more that if I had a cheerful home to which he could turn for warmth and sunshine, if I had a wife whom he could reverence and be fond of, if there were grandchildren to greet him when he came and to play upon his knee—he would feel once more as if there was something in life worth living for.”
Horace awaited with deep anxiety the answer to this. The General was the worst card in his hand, one which he was glad to be rid of at any risk. If it should turn out that it had actually taken a trick in the game, then he would indeed be lucky.
“If it is no offence, how old are you, Mr. Boyce?” the lady asked.
“I shall be twenty-eight in April.”