“I must do it somehow,” said Tommy, very earnestly.
“I naturally wish you to succeed, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, very quietly. After a pause he added, almost diffidently: “Possibly, I--I might be able to help you, my son--”
“I must do it myself,” interjected Tommy, quickly. “I--I must.”
Mr. Leigh seemed on the point of saying something that Tommy might not like to hear, but checked himself and finally said: “I hope you may succeed. It will be difficult work and--But you must be tired from your traveling?”
He looked at Tommy doubtfully, and Tommy, who wished to be alone with his thoughts and his new heartache, said:
“I am, rather; but I thought I'd take a look at the evening papers. I'll go out and get them.”
“You will find them in the library--all of them.”
“Yes, I--I had forgotten which was your favorite.” The old man would not look at his son. Presently he finished: “I'll read the _Post_. Come, my son.”
They went up-stairs. Tommy tried to read. He looked at all the papers, but not even the football gossip held his attention. From time to time he looked up, to see his father absorbed in the editorial page of the _Post_. This was evidently a part of his daily routine. Tommy saw him sitting all alone in the gloomy little room called the library, because it had been so christened by his mother long years before. Day in and day out the old man had sat in this room, alone with his thoughts, with the consciousness of loving vows kept at such a cost!
“Yes?” said Mr. Leigh, emotionlessly. Even in the way in which he laid down his paper on his lap there was that curious leisureliness of senility that somehow savored less of age-feebleness than of years and years of unchanging habit.
“I am going to bed. I want to feel particularly fit to-morrow.” Tommy stood there waiting for something, he knew not what exactly--something that might give him the emotional relief he was not fully conscious he needed.
“Good night, Thomas,” said Mr. Leigh, and resumed his newspaper.
TOMMY was up and dressed at working-man's hours the next morning. He had fought until midnight, and finally pushed his fears into a corner and kept them there. After the friends who always had been friends and, therefore, would continue always to be friends, were stockholders, he would allow himself to think of other things.