about his life. But when he looked up again, his father’s stare was fixed sadly in the fire. The boy stopped in confusion, pierced with a bitter pain.
“That’s good,” said Gant, hearing him speak no more. “Be a good boy, son. We’re proud of you.”
Ben came home two days before Christmas: he prowled through the house like a familiar ghost. He had left the town early in the autumn, after his return from Baltimore. For three months he had wandered alone through the South, selling to the merchants in small towns space for advertisements upon laundry cards. How well this curious business succeeded he did not say: he was scrupulously neat, but threadbare and haggard, and more fiercely secretive than ever. He had found employment at length upon a newspaper in a rich tobacco town of the Piedmont. He was going there after Christmas.
He had come to them, as always, bearing gifts.
Luke came in from the naval school at Newport, on Christmas eve. They heard his sonorous tenor shouting greetings to people in the street; he entered the house upon a blast of air. Everyone began to grin.
“Well, here we are! The Admiral’s back! Papa, how’s the boy! Well, for God’s sake!” he cried, embracing Gant, and slapping his back. “I thought I was coming to see a sick man! You’re looking like the flowers that bloom in the Spring.”
“Pretty well, my boy. How are you?” said Gant, with a pleased grin.
“Couldn’t be better, Colonel’Gene, how are you, Old Scout? Good!” he said, without waiting for an answer. “Well, well, if it isn’t Old Baldy,” he cried, pumping Ben’s hand. “I didn’t know whether you’d be here or not. Mama, old girl,” he said, as he embraced her, “how’re they going? Still hitting on all six. Fine!” he yelled, before any one could reply to anything.
“Why, son, —what on earth!” cried Eliza, stepping back to look at him. “What have you done to yourself? You walk as if you are lame.”
He laughed idiotically at sight of her troubled face and prodded her.
