It was long past dinner-time, but he dashed out now and got food,
and when Baby Thomas came in he found his room-mate sleepy, but
quite himself; quite steady in his congratulations as well as
normal in his abuse for "keeping a decent white man awake to
this hour."

Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech."
As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father
waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall
figure, topped with a wonderful head--a mane of gray hair,
a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of
brains and force--a man to be seen in any crowd. With that,
as his own met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware
of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very
head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once
made two years of work a small thing.

"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you,"
he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his
father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.

"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't
remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied
as you have to-day."

With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked
away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word
anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before,
perhaps, had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons.