“Ah!” he said. “You thought of me!”
He had seen the cigar-box, the whisky and Perrier. A very gentle, intensely kind, almost beaming look came into his lined face.
“Or—was it Murgatroyd?”
“No.”
“I wonder whether you know what it means to an old fellow like myself to be thought of now and then in these little ways!”
“Oh—Seymour!” she said.
Tears stood in her eyes. His few simple words had suddenly brought home to her in a strange, intense way the long loneliness to which she had condemned him. And now he was an old fellow! And he was grateful, beamingly grateful, for a little commonplace thought about his comfort such as any hostess might surely have had!
“Don’t!” she added. “You hurt me when you say such a thing.”
“Do I? And if I take a cigar?”
“Here! Let me clip it for you!”