“Well, I'll not encourage him by puttin' a lot o' cash in his clutches,” Hoag sniffed. “If he'd set in an' work like you used to do, for instance, thar's no tellin' what I would do for him in the long run. Well, I'm keepin' you up. I'll see you in the mornin'. Good night.”
“Good night,” Paul said.
With his lighted candle in his hand Hoag went down-stairs and turned into his own room, adjoining the one in which Jack and his grandmother slept. Putting his candle on a table, he began to undress. He had finished and was about to lie down when he heard a light footfall in the next room. A connecting door was pushed open and a tall, slender boy in a white nightgown stood in the moonlight which streamed through a vine-hung window and fell on the floor.
“Is that you, Daddy?”
“Yes, son.” There was an odd note of affection in Hoag's welcoming tone. “Do you want anything?”
The boy crept forward slowly. “I got scared. I woke and heard you talkin' up-stairs like you was still quarreling with Henry.”
“You must have been dreaming.” The father held out his arms and drew the boy into a gentle embrace. “Do you want to sleep with your old daddy?”
“Oh yes!” Jack crawled from his father's arms to the back part of the bed and stretched out his slender white legs against the plastered wall. “May I sleep here till morning, and get up when you do?”
“Yes, if you want to. Do you railly love to sleep in my bed?”
Hoag was now lying down, and Jack put his arm under his big neck and hugged him. “Yes, I do; I don't like my little bed; it's too short.”