Not an accident to Ned, John Carrington prayed, with stiff, dry lips and apprehensive eyes.
“Of all things!” Mrs. Kipley murmured; and her tone indicated that she was now past surprise, and merely numbered with the numb.
Some one was running up the veranda steps; the door was flung open, and a tall, dark, slender boy in a marvelous suit of dull gray velveteens stood on the threshold.
A long, crimson-lined cape was flung over his arm. He tossed it from him. And “Dad!” he cried, exultantly, and was across the room, with his arms around his father’s neck, and had kissed him on both cheeks.
“French fashion, dad!” he laughed, flushing suddenly.
“Now we’ll do it the Anglo-Saxon way;” and he caught both his father’s hands in his own and wrung them heartily. “It’s great to be home again,” he said, buoyantly.
And the joyful light in his eyes was unmistakably genuine.
John Carrington’s face softened amazingly. Happiness such as he had not known for six years gripped him. The warm ardor of his son’s embrace, the touch of the soft, boyish lips, unnerved him, but he liked it astonishingly. It was so naïf, so unspoiled, so reassuring against that dread of alienation he had endured, that he felt submerged in the warm, comfortable certitude of his son’s affection. He gripped the lad’s hands strongly, and surveyed him with a proud, fatherly interest.
The blue eyes that looked frankly into his own were like the lad’s mother’s, like Althea’s; the face that smiled gayly at him was alight with youthful energy, and the mouth, though the lips were a trifle full, had firm and resolute lines.
It was no dawdling dreamer that he saw, but an action-lover.