or sit by me, if you can bear it, and talk of your school-life, and your
studies. Your aunt Dorothy, Richie? She is well? I know not her like.
I could bear to hear of any misfortune but that she suffered pain.

My father smoked his cigar peacefully. He had laid a guitar on his
knees, and flipped a string, or chafed over all the strings, and plucked
and thrummed them as his mood varied. We chatted, and watched the going
down of the sun, and amused ourselves idly, fermenting as we were.
Anything that gave pleasure to us two boys pleased and at once occupied
my father. It was without aid from Temple's growing admiration of him
that I recovered my active belief and vivid delight in his presence. My
younger days sprang up beside me like brothers. No one talked, looked,
flashed, frowned, beamed, as he did! had such prompt liveliness as he!
such tenderness! No one was ever so versatile in playfulness. He took
the colour of the spirits of the people about him. His vivacious or
sedate man-of-the-world tone shifted to playfellow's fun in a twinkling.
I used as a little fellow to think him larger than he really was, but he
was of good size, inclined to be stout; his eyes were grey, rather
prominent, and his forehead sloped from arched eyebrows. So
conversational were his eyes and brows that he could persuade you to
imagine he was carrying on a dialogue without opening his mouth. His
voice was charmingly clear; his laughter confident, fresh, catching, the
outburst of his very self, as laughter should be. Other sounds of
laughter were like echoes.

Strange to say, I lost the links of my familiarity with him when he left
us on a short visit to his trunks and portmanteaux, and had to lean on
Temple, who tickled but rejoiced me by saying: 'Richie, your father is
just the one I should like to be secretary to.'