"Yes; Inwood is a corker. I'm terribly glad."
"Oh, are you!"
"Aren't you?"
"Confound it! how do I know whether I'm glad or not to see the house emptying itself of all your mother and I care for—" He stopped with a dry catch in his throat, then resumed more cautiously:
"I thought Chrissy's tale of woe was sufficient for one morning, but here you come galloping in with one that beats hers to a batter! How do you suppose I like it? I expected to have my children with me for a while.... Yesterday you were in the cradle.... To-day you're up and off and out into the world with a girl I never saw before last June! Jack! Jack! what the devil's the matter with everything!"
"Isn't everything about as it was when you were my age, father?"
"No, it isn't. If anybody had predicted these times, he'd have been locked up for a lunatic! What with luxury, and fashions, and folderol, and high finance, and cards, and cocktails, and cigarettes——"
"I don't mean the details, dad; but isn't it all about the same—the birth, growth, courtship, parting? Isn't it?"
The older man was silent.
Jack rose and stood by the window watching the big clouds drifting across the sky.