“I didn’t know.”
“You really do favor my Uncle John,” Jethro said, after a pause. “Do you mind—it will be your first duty—getting a leather case from that top, left-hand drawer? Yes, that’s it,” when she brought it back. “See! Here he is. Now, isn’t the mouth the same?”
He held before her the faded likeness, taken on silver, of a young man in staid black clothes, and with straggling side whiskers.
“Taken just before he ran away. Is it anything like your father?”
She stared at the dim old portrait for a long time before she answered. Her eyes took in every detail—the doubled fist on a bulky book, the vapid smile, the too apparent watch-chain with its bunch of seals.
“I can’t say,” she returned faintly at last. “This is a young man. Father was gray when I remember him. He married late in life. He had a white beard. But I think,” she held the portrait thoughtfully sideways, “that the mouth is something like. Father had a bare lip to the end of his days.”
She shut the case and laid it on the table. Another bee came in and darted at the nodding cherries in her hat. The metallic clink from the smithy became more persistent. Jethro said gently at last, putting out the big brown hand which was so dry and yielding:
“Then it is settled?”
Pamela, her head down, the long, haggard line deep on her lips, said almost inaudibly:
“Yes.”