He said this with a confident smile, and the peering little man at last read him accurately. An impalpable veil seemed to screen his scowling face. Erect from his peering stoop he passed a small hand dazedly across his brow, and his face had become pleasantly ingenuous, alive with a half-comprehending regret. With a rueful laugh he put out a hand to Ewing, who took it, to say the least, doubtfully.
"A thousand pardons, my boy! I fear I've suffered an attack of nervous aberration to which I am unhappily subject. It's most distressing. I'm chagrined beyond measure by the annoyance I must have caused you, I give no end of worry to my specialist by these seizures. My speech wandered provokingly, I dare say. It always does. You'd not credit some of the things I've said to my dearest friends at such times. But you can fancy the mortification it is to me. You'll pardon me, I trust—youth's charity for the failings of age. The horrid truth is that I'm a bit oldish—not aged, not outworn, mind you—my years have come and gone lightly—but at times like these I'm obliged to admit the count. Come, you'll forget?"
Ewing delightedly pressed his hand. He could believe the little man's tale of his years. The hair that he had remarked for its young look had been uncannily twisted on the head of its wearer during the flurry of his transport. An area of luminous scalp now showed above one ear.
He stammered awkward but heartfelt words of assurance.
"Doubtless it quite bowled you over," Teevan pursued—"though I never can recall what I've said; but let us forget, and, if you'd not mind, let us say nothing of it to anyone—to Mrs. Laithe, for example. If it came to the ears of my son—he's over-anxious about me already."
"Certainly, I'll not speak of it, and I'm sorry, very sorry. Lay your gloves on the mantel there and find a seat." He turned to his trunk, hoping the little man would sight his head in the mirror. When he again looked up the hair was in perfect adjustment, and Teevan beamed on him from an armchair.
"Your father," he began, "I seem to recall your saying it—was a painter. Doubtless he taught you much."
"I studied with him there in the mountains till he died. I've nothing left of his but this portrait of my mother."
He took the unframed canvas from the tray of the trunk and held it before his guest.
"Do you get the right light there?"