"Anything out of kilter? I mean, besides your headache?"
("He's going to say he's hard up--the extravagant cuss!" Henry Houghton thought, with the old provoked affection.)
"I'm bothered about ... something," Maurice began.
("He's squabbled with Eleanor. I wish I was asleep!")
"Uncle Henry," Maurice said, "if you were going to see a lawyer, who would you see?"
"I wouldn't see him. Lawyers make their cake by cooking up other people's troubles. Sit down. Let's talk it out." He settled himself in a corner of the ragged old horsehair sofa which faced the empty fireplace and motioned Maurice to a chair. "I thought it wasn't all headache; what's the matter, boy?"
Maurice sat down, cleared his throat, and put his hands in his pockets so they would not betray him. "I--" he said.
Mr. Houghton appeared absorbed in biting off the end of his cigar.
"Maurice," said Henry Houghton, "keep the peace. If you and Eleanor have fallen out, don't stand on your dignity. Go upstairs and say you're sorry, whether you are or not. Don't talk about lawyers."
"My God!" said Maurice; "did you suppose it was _that_?"
Mr. Houghton stopped biting the end of his cigar, and looked at him. "Why, yes; I did. You and she are rather foolish, you know. So I supposed--"
Maurice dropped his face on his arms on the big dusty table, littered with pamphlets and charcoal studies and squeezed-out paint tubes. After a while he lifted his head: "_That's_ nothing. I wish it was that."
The older man rose and stood with his back to the mantelpiece. They both heard the clock ticking loudly. Then, almost in a whisper, Maurice said:
"I've had a letter from a woman. She says--"
Mr. Houghton sat down again. "Go on," he said.
Maurice reached for a maulstick lying across the table; then leaned over, his elbows on his knees, and tried, with two trembling forefingers, to make it stand upright on the floor. "She's common. She can't prove it's--mine." His effort to keep the stick vertical with those two shaking fingers was agonizing.
"Begin at the beginning," Henry Houghton said.
Maurice let the maulstick drop against his shoulder and sunk his head on his hands. Suddenly he sat up: "What's the use of lying? She's _not_ bad all through." The truth seemed to tear him as he uttered it. "That's the worst of it," he groaned. "If she was, I'd know what to do. But probably she's not lying... She says it's mine. Yes; I pretty well know she's not lying."