“You don’t say.” His eyes swept the room. “Where’s that trunk?” He found it, and called to me to come and see what it contained.
“See here—how’s this? I brought these things with me when I first left home, and intended to cook for myself, but a fellow can’t bother with these things. Hasn’t got the time, and then everything gets lost about the place,” he added ruefully. “Now here’s a little gas stove. I use it to heat water for shaving, and sometimes when the boys come in on a cold night we make a hot drink.”
I had picked up a little brass kettle, and I saw him looking at it. He put his hands on the other side of it gently, and he said:
“That belonged to my mother. She’s been dead two years now.”
“Oh, we’ll not touch it,” I declared. “We’ll make coffee in something else.”
He pressed the little kettle upon me.
He stood in the doorway just looking about him, and slowly over his face there came the most beautiful smile I have seen in the world.
“No, no, you shall make it in this. My mother would have liked you to. I wish you could have known her.”