TO-MORROW
Page: 11

out. There was a whole column devoted to appeals
after missing relatives. He would bring the news-
paper to show her. He and his wife had advertised
for years; only she was an impatient woman. The
news from Colebrook had arrived the very day after
her funeral; if she had not been so impatient she
might have been here now, with no more than one
day more to wait. "You are not an impatient
woman, my dear."

"I've no patience with you sometimes," she
would say.

If he still advertised for his son he did not offer
rewards for information any more; for, with the
muddled lucidity of a mental derangement he had
reasoned himself into a conviction as clear as day-
light that he had already attained all that could be
expected in that way. What more could he want?
Colebrook was the place, and there was no need to
ask for more. Miss Carvil praised him for his good
sense, and he was soothed by the part she took in
his hope, which had become his delusion; in that
idea which blinded his mind to truth and probabil-
ity, just as the other old man in the other cottage
had been made blind, by another disease, to the
light and beauty of the world.

But anything he could interpret as a doubt--
any coldness of assent, or even a simple inattention
to the development of his projects of a home with
his returned son and his son's wife--would irritate
him into flings and jerks and wicked side glances.
He would dash his spade into the ground and walk
to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his tan-
trums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when
she came out again, after he had parted with her
in anger, he would watch out of the corner of his
eyes for the least sign of encouragement to ap-
proach the iron railings and resume his fatherly
and patronising relations.

For all their intimacy, which had lasted some
years now, they had never talked without a fence
or a railing between them. He described to her all
the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of
their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an
inspection. No human eye was to behold them till
Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever