“You can all have as much and more, if you like,” he said. “I stand for him.”
He struck the side of the door a blow with his closed fist, a blow that seemed to shake the entire side of the room. “Remember that when your tongues start,” he emphasized, and was gone in the darkness.
There was no danger that they would forget.
* * * * *
In a quiet bedroom, the lad whom he had championed had fallen asleep in a big chair beside his father’s bed.
He had sat there till John Carrington had slept, and then, too drowsy to move, had slept himself—that youthful sleep of healthy exhaustion.
John Carrington, waking in the night, looked at the boy as he rested his head in the corner of the high-backed chair. The long, dark lashes lay lightly on cheeks rounded daintily enough for a girl, but the lines of the firm young chin had a quiet decision even now.
Far into the night John Carrington lay with open eyes resting on his son, and in the depths of those eyes was content immeasurable.
* * * * *
The days stretched into weeks, weeks to months. It was September now.