“Drink your tea,” he said quietly. “You’re tired, you poor child. And I’ll do the talking.” He leaned forward, his voice low.
“I was in England for fifteen years—until six months ago,” he said. “Then I came out hurriedly, to attend to business; my elder brother had died, leaving me his property near here. It was only just before I sailed from England that I heard that my old friend had gone; we were both bad correspondents, and not many letters passed between us. I did make inquiries about his children in Melbourne, but I couldn’t get on your track: I have been intending to go down and find you, but all my brother’s affairs were very tangled, and I have only just succeeded in straightening them out. It’s the queerest thing that I should come across you here!”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” I murmured. “It’s just lovely to find some one who knew Father!”
“He and I were friends as boys and at the University,” Dr. Firth said. “We took our degrees in the same year. I owe more to him than to anyone in the world—more than I could tell anyone except his own children. I was a pretty wild youngster, and I got into a horrible mess in my University days. It would have been the end of my career as a doctor, but for Denis. His help and his cool judgment pulled me through, but he went poor for three years because of it. I paid him back in money—hard enough it was to get him to take it, too. But the biggest part of it, that wasn’t money, I never could repay. I’ll be his debtor all my life.”
He paused, and I could see that he was wrung with feeling.
“I don’t know anything about it, of course,” I stammered. “But Father would never have thought anything of it. You were his great friend. He often talked to us about you, and told us what mates you had been.” I hesitated. “Colin is named after you: Colin Gerald Earle.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m rather proud of it. And where is Colin now? A full-fledged doctor, I suppose? He was a great little boy.”
“He is a great boy still,” I said. “He is just like Father. But he isn’t a doctor, and he never will be, now. He is just a clerk in an insurance office.”
“A—clerk!” he uttered. “But Denis wrote me that his whole soul was in medicine. He was to succeed your father in his practice. And you—why are you here, bear-leading these youngsters? Surely there were no money troubles?”
I told him, briefly, just how things had been. He did not say much, but it seemed to me that his face grew older.