“It always seems easier to me to think and talk out of doors. I suppose it’s because I’ve spent a good deal of my life there.” And then, speaking quietly and sort of lazily, he told us some things he’d seen and that had happened to him. He wasn’t an explorer, after all. He was an engineer and he had spent most of his life in the West and Southwest building irrigating dams and canals and things. I’ll bet they were good ones. He was that sort, as Billy would say. Some of the yarns he told were corkers, and he told them in such a smiling, matter-of-fact way that they sounded bully and made you want to pack up and hike out there where such things happened. He had had adventures, all right! And he had us laughing one minute and sitting still and gripping our hands the next and hardly daring to breathe! Gee, if I could tell a story the way he could, I’d never do another thing!
“It’s a big country out there,” he said finally, “with lots of things to be done.”
“I should think,” said Pete, “you’d find it rather tame back here, Mr. Perrin.”
“Tame? Not at all. I like this best. But then, I’m getting along toward where the quiet life begins to look pretty good, boys. I find now when I go back out there that saddles are harder than they used to be and ponchos aren’t as soft to sleep on as hair mattresses. But I’m always glad to get there again—and always glad to come back. In two or three years more I won’t have to make the trip very often, I guess. Bob will do that for me. He’s going to have a man’s job on his hands when he’s ready for it.”
“Is he going to take up engineering too, sir?” I asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary. That part of it is done. Of course it’s best for him to know something of it, and so he and I go out there in the summers and I show him the why and the how. I dare say he learns as well that way as he would if he took a course at the Scientific School. Bob’s work will be to manage what I’ve built. It will be his after a while, you see. Bob’s the only one we have and there won’t be any others now. It’s a good deal like putting all your eggs in one basket, you see. When you do that you’re liable to be mighty careful of the basket.”
He filled his pipe again, looking off across the field toward where the smoke was going up straight from the chimneys of the house. We didn’t say anything. After a minute:
“It’s a fine, comforting thing to know that there’s someone coming after you to carry things along,” he said thoughtfully. “It makes what’s ahead of you look pretty trifling. I always feel a deep pity for men who haven’t sons. It seems to me that they’ve failed in what God sent ’em here to do. I guess your fathers know what I mean, and you will know it, too, some day—I hope. I hate to think what it must be like for men who haven’t any children when the shadows begin to deepen. Maybe all fathers don’t feel the way I do about it, but I guess they must. Four of the finest words I know of are these: ‘From father to son.’ Well, well, I’m boring you with all this stuff. And it’s getting a little chilly now. We’ll walk back and get ready for dinner. We dine early out here. I hope you won’t mind.”
When we got back he took us upstairs to a fine big room, and it took just a glance to show that it was Bob’s. There were all sorts of photographs stuck around: school nines and elevens and track teams, you know, with Bob’s face peering out from some of them. There was a bookcase in one corner with all Bob’s old school books and story books on the shelves. And there were some pewter cups on the mantel and some pennants on the walls and a split baseball bat and a canoe paddle with things written on it and a plaited hair bridle and a pair of wicked-looking Mexican spurs. It was just a regular boy’s room with all the things a fellow accumulates and hates to throw away even as he grows older. Mr. Perrin took up some of the photographs and pointed out Bob in them; Bob, a little kid in knickerbockers; Bob in track togs, with his fingers tight over his grips; Bob holding a football in the center of a group; Bob wearing chaps and a big sombrero and seated on a cow pony. Then he went out and left us, and we washed up. No one said very much, and we all hurried.
Downstairs we met Mrs. Perrin. I guess you’d call her homely, but she was the sort of homely that looks good to a fellow. She was small and looked not very strong, but she was all right. You knew she could do one thing to the King’s taste, and that was to be a mother. We had a bully dinner. Nothing fluffy, but regular food that went right to the spot and stuck. We were all of us hungry, too, all of us except, maybe, Mrs. Perrin. I don’t think she ate much, but she surely saw to it that we did. Billy made a great hit with her because he had been at Milton with Bob. She didn’t talk a whole lot about Bob, but you could see that she was pretty proud of him just the same. There wasn’t a word said about why we were there. We were just friends or college mates of Bob’s, and that was enough. Mrs. Perrin was full of fun in a quiet way, and it was dandy to see how she and Mr. Perrin played up to each other. She prompted him to tell this story or that, and he came back at her the same way. About the middle of dinner we felt as if we’d known those folks for years! We sure had a dandy time.