“Let's walk down to the gate,” he said, in a low, unsteady voice. “I want to talk, Toby, and yet I don't hardly know what a body could say. I have faced lots of criticism and slurs in my day and time, and never cared much what was said; but, between me and you, this thing strikes me down deep. You see, it is pretty tough the way it turned out—this having other folks give a body's son a home, and all that, and I hate to think that folks here in Stafford will get onto it and chatter. I understand 'em well enough to know, in advance, what they will say. I don't care what they think about me losing money, and the like, for that's just business. But the other thing cuts—it cuts deep. I reckon the boy didn't get any too much attention at home after I married the last time, and I reckon, if the truth was known, I was influenced against him some by his stepmother's constant nagging about his ways. I say I reckon I was influenced, for I hardly think I'd have been quite as tight on the boy if there had been just me and him left at home after his mother died. My first wife was a good woman, Toby. I never knew how good and loving she was till she was put away forever. But the town will talk now good fashion. They will say Fred served me' right to go off and get appreciated and loved by folks that was no blood kin, but who simply took him on merits I was too mean to see. They will have the laugh on me. They will call me an old hog, and I reckon I deserve it. You know, yourself, that I come within an inch of clapping handcuffs on him. I'd actually have done it if you hadn't shown me that it would go against my pocket.”
“I think you look at it too seriously, Mr. Walton,” Toby ventured to say, as the two leaned on the gate and looked down the gas-lighted street. “You mustn't forget that Fred has been longing for your forgiveness all these years. What he did was wrong, it is true, and at present it may be the chief bar to his content. Besides, me and you are the only persons who know about his shortage. You have never been a man to talk of your private affairs, and, for all this town knows or ever need know, you may have been in touch with Fred all these years. In fact, they may not know but what the—the other matter was the only cause of Fred's leaving.”
“Toby, you are a good un! You'll do, you'll do! Of course, the woman business is bad, but the world somehow don't condemn it as heavy as some other things. No, you are right; this blasted town needn't know about the trouble between me and him. He won't want to come back here nohow till the other matter is arranged some way, and, between me and you, we can sort o' spring his big success on the town—kind o' off-hand, you know, as if it ain't nothing to wonder at.”
“A good idea, Mr. Walton!” Toby declared, enthusiastically. “It will set 'em wild.”
“But we'll leave the adopted-son part out, Toby.”
“Of course, sir; oh yes, sir; that needn't go in!”
“We might just tell about his being a partner in the business, or something along that line.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And I'll go out there, Toby. It will be like pulling eye-teeth, but I'll go. I'll knuckle, too, I reckon, to that fat chump. I'll make my will in the boy's favor and show it to Whipple, with an itemized list of my holdings, here and there. He won't sneer then, I reckon. Besides, Fred won't go back on me. Blood's thicker than water, and if I have been harsh—well, even if I have, my money will be as acceptable as that old skunk's. Yes, I'll run out in a day or so. And, Toby, I'll not even touch on the woman-and-child affair. He may think it never got out; he may believe she's kept it quiet. In the letters he wrote me, he never once alluded to it, and that shows he is not ready to admit it, anyway. No, we won't push that on him at such a time; he never would want to come home if he knew there had been such an uproar.”