“The prime of life, my dear sir,” he would say, “the heyday of existence! Up to sixty a man gathers his experience and tears his fingers dreadfully. After sixty he can sit down quietly and enjoy it and let his fingers heal.”
There was a pause in the talk, and the three sat, as they often did, content to be together, looking into the fire and thinking their own thoughts. Perhaps the girl's were the happiest. The room had darkened, and the firelight played on their faces gathered round the hearth. Suddenly Sylvester spoke.
“I was talking to Ella about my plans, father, before you came in.”
“A very sensible person to talk to,” said Matthew.
“I've burned my ships. I have sold the practice and am going to join Frodsham in London.”
“I'm very glad indeed to hear it,” said the old man; “you should have done it years ago.”
His voice was suave and even, but the keen eye of the physician detected a trembling of the fingers resting on the broad leathern arm of the chair.
“I don't at all like to leave you,” said Sylvester, feeling guilty. Matthew waved away the reluctance.
“Nonsense, my boy. I'm not a cripple that requires to be taken care of. Grown up men can't be for ever hanging on to—I was going to say, to each other's apron strings. London is your place. Perhaps after a time, when I am dead and gone,—a man must die some day, you know,—you'll like to come back to the old house and devote yourself entirely to research and be independent of two guinea fees and that kind of thing. That would be nice, wouldn't it, Ella?”
The girl's heart throbbed at the share implied, but a tenderer feeling quieted it at once.