“I’ve noticed your avoidance of the old name,” said Baltazar. “It must have been in pretty evil odour for the past twenty years or so.”
“You’re such an incalculable fellow,” said Sheepshanks, with a kind smile. “The romance you so delicately suggest never occurred to any of us.”
“Well, well,” said Baltazar, “all that is done and over long ago. Anyhow, I wasn’t the heartless wretch Cambridge must have taken me for. I leave my rehabilitation in your hands. To me now the main, staring, extraordinary fact is that I have a son. A son. I, who thought I was wandering lonely as What’s-his-name’s cloud. I’ve got a son. A mathematician. The same lunatic quirk of brain. If he were the village idiot—it would be different.—You remember the ghastly story of Guy de Maupassant? But not only my own flesh and blood, but my own flesh, blood and intellect.” He paced about the room. “What kind of a fellow is he? Is he like me? Have you seen him?”
“Yes; once. Crosby—you remember Crosby?” He waved a hand towards the college visible through the window.
“Yes, yes,” said Baltazar, impatiently.
“Crosby asked me to breakfast, one day, to meet him. The son of John Baltazar, senior mathematical scholar of his year, was a curiosity. We didn’t tell the young man so. Indeed, I suppose he wondered why such an old fossil like myself was there.”
“Never mind what he thought of old fossils, my dear Sheepshanks. What was he like?”
“Like you. Quite recognizable. But fairer, and though sensible and manly, less—if you will allow me to say so—less of a firebrand.”
“Anyhow, a good straight chap. Not merely low mathematical cunning enveloped in any kind of smug exterior?”
“He’s a son any father would be proud of,” said Sheepshanks.