“God bless you, old man.”
And, tucking the money in his pocket, he shuffled down the street.
CHAPTER X
THE DEAR DEPARTED
If Eliphalet Cardomay never pretended Mornice June was his own daughter he certainly never checked her from calling him Father, or any other such title her fancy devised. A man on the very wrong side of sixty, who has never been so called, finds the sound of that name comes very sweetly to his ears.
When he met her at the station on her return from the tour, she halloed “Father” from the carriage window, and leapt into his arms before the train had stopped.
Usually Eliphalet was a ceremonious man under the eye of the public, but on this occasion he returned her embraces with a warmth equal to her own.
“Dear me!” he said, as arm-in-arm, the gust of welcome having subsided, they walked from the station. “Dear me! I wouldn’t have believed I could be so happy and excited. I haven’t been kissed on a railway platform since——”
“When?”
He hesitated. “Oh, a very long while ago.”
His thoughts strayed back over a chasm of years, to the time when this girl’s mother, in the first flights of their courtship, embarrassed him grievously by the publicity of her affections.