“Well, old fellow,” he said, turning feebly on his pillow, so as to face Matthew, “something like what you call the ‘horrors’ has been taking hold of me. And this morning, in particular, I was so wretched and lonely, that I asked the landlady to write for me to my father, begging his pardon, and all that. I haven’t behaved as well as I ought; and, somehow, when a fellow’s ill and lonely he gets homesick—”
His voice began to grow faint, and he left the sentence unfinished.
“Zack,” said Mat, turning his face away from the bed while he spoke, though it was now quite dark. “Zack, what sort of a man is your father?”
“What sort of a man! How do you mean?”
“To look at. Are you like him in the face?”
“Lord help you, Mat! as little like as possible. My father’s face is all wrinkled and marked.”
“Aye, aye, like other old men’s faces. His hair’s grey, I suppose?”
“Quite white. By-the-by—talking of that—there is one point I’m like him in—at least, like what he was, when he was a young man.”
“What’s that?”
“What we’ve been speaking of—his hair. I’ve heard my mother say, when she first married him—just shake up my pillow a bit, will you, Mat?”