Reaching home he found his father seated in the library. He looked up from the evening paper as George entered.
“Only half-past nine,” he said, with an air of sarcasm. “You spend your evenings out so systematically that your early return surprises me. How is it? Has the theater begun to lose its charm!”
There was no great sympathy between father and son, and if either felt affection for the other, it was never manifested. Mutual recrimination was the rule between them, and George would now have made an angry answer but that he had a favor to ask, and felt it politic to be conciliatory.
“If I had supposed you cared for my society, sir, I would have remained at home oftener.”
“Umph!” was the only reply elicited from his father.
“However, there was a good reason for my not going to the theater to-night.”
“Indeed!”
“I had no money.”
“Your explanation is quite satisfactory,” said his father, with a slight sneer. “I sympathize in your disappointment.”
“There is no occasion, sir,” said George, good humoredly, for him. “I had no great desire to go.”