He spoke with utter decision, as he had always done to Falk, as though he were five years old and could naturally know nothing about life.
"But, father--don't you think it's bad for me, hanging round here doing nothing?"
Brandon got up, went across to the little ladder, hesitated a moment, then climbed up.
"I've had this picture twenty years," he said, "and it's never hung straight yet."
"No, but, father," said Falk, coming across to him, "I'm a man now, not a boy. I can't hang about any longer--I can't really."
"We'll talk about it in the autumn," said Brandon, humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers," as he always did, a little out of tune.
"I've got to earn my own living, haven't I?" said Falk.
"There!" said Brandon, stepping back a little, so that he nearly overbalanced. "That's better. But it won't stay like that for five minutes. It never does."
He climbed down again, his face rosy with his exertions. "You leave it to me, Falk," he said, nodding his head. "I've got plans for you."
A sudden sense of the contrast between Ronder and his father smote Falk. His father! What an infant! How helpless against that other! Moved by the strangest mixture of tenderness, regret, pity, he did what he had never in all his life before dreamed of doing, what he would have died of shame for doing, had any one else been there--put his hands on his father's shoulders and kissed him lightly on his cheek.