John Damer frowned. A bewildered look came into his vacant eyes, and he closed them. And he, who had spoken no word for fifty years, said in a thin quavering voice:
“The guns have ceased.”
He opened his eyes suddenly. They wandered to the light, and fell upon the nurse near the window.
“I am in hospital,” he said.
“No. You are in your own home,” said Michael, laying his hand on the ancient wrinkled hand.
The dim sunken eyes turned slowly in the direction of the voice.
“Father,” said the old man looking full at Michael. “Father! well, you do look blooming.”
The colour rushed to Michael’s face. He had expected complications, and had prepared numberless phrases in his mind to meet imaginary dilemmas. But he had never thought of this.
“Not Father,” said Serena intervening. “You are forgetting. Father died before you married, and you put up that beautiful monument to him in the Church.”
“So I did,” said the old man, testily. “So I did, but he is exactly like him all the same, only Father never wore his clothes too tight for him and a made up tie—never.”