“Would you like to put away your things now?” asked Dan, as he placed his father's bundle, which he had carried up-town from the office, on the bed.
“I'll do that by and by. There ain't much there—just a few little things I've managed to keep, or that have been given me.”
Dan pushed two chairs before an open window that overlooked the square. His father had taken a huge blackened meerschaum from its case and was carefully filling it from a leather pouch.
“You don't mind if I light my pipe?” he inquired.
“Not a bit. I've one in my pocket, but it's not nearly as fine as yours.”
“Our warden gave it to me one Christmas, and I've smoked it ever since. He was a very good man, Dannie. It's the old warden I'm speaking of, not Kenyon, the new one, though he's a good man, too.”
Dan wondered where he had heard the name of Kenyon before; then he remembered—it was at the Emorys'.
“Try some of my tobacco, Dannie,” passing the pouch.
For a time the two men sat in silence, blowing clouds of white smoke out into the night. Under the trees, just bursting into leaf, the street-lamps flickered in a long, dim perspective, and now and then a stray word floated up to them, coming from a group of idlers on the corner below the window.
Roger Oakley hitched his chair nearer his son's, and rested a heavy hand on his knee. “I like it here,” he said.