he added nervously, “Wy, I fink, I fink I’d m-m-make it short and snappy if I were you. D-d-don’t say anyf’ing to excite him, wy, wy, wy, I’d just say good-bye.”
“Hello, son,” said Gant quietly and dully, looking up at him. For a moment his great hand closed over the boy’s, and he said quietly:
“Where are you going?”
“Wy, wy, wy, he’s on his way up Norf… wy… he’s g-g-going to Harvard, Papa.”
“Be a good boy, son,” Gant said gently. “Do the best you can. If you need anything let your mother know,” he said wearily and indifferently, and turned his dead eyes away across the city.
“Wy… wy… wy he’d like to tell you—”
“Oh, Jesus…. I don’t want to hear about it,” Gant began to sniffle in a whining tone…. “Why must it all be put on me… sick and old as I am?… If he wants anything let him ask his mother for it… it’s fearful, it’s awful, and it’s cruel that you should afflict a sick man in this way.” He was sniffling petulantly and his chin, on which a wiry stubble of beard was growing, trembled and shook like that of a whining child.
“I… I… I fink I’d just say g-g-good-bye now, Gene… m-m-make it, wy make it quick if you can: he’s not f-f-feeling good today.”
“Good-bye, Papa,” the boy said, and, bending, took his father’s great right hand.
“Good-bye, son,” Gant now said quietly as before, looking up at him. He presented his grizzled moustache, and the boy kissed him briefly, feeling the wiry bristles of the moustache brush his cheek as they had always done.
“Take care of yourself, son,” said Gant kindly. “Do the best you can.” And for a moment he covered the boy’s hand with one great palm, and gestured briefly across the city: “I was a boy here,” Gant said quietly, “over fifty years ago… old Jeff Streeter’s hotel where I lived was there,” he pointed briefly with his great forefinger. “…. I was alone in this great city like the city you are going to—a poor friendless country boy who had come here to learn his trade as apprentice to a stone-cutter… and I had come from… there!” as he spoke these words, a flash of the old power and life had come into Gant’s voice, and now he was pointing his great finger strongly towards the sun-hazed vistas of the North and West.
“There!” cried Gant, strongly now, his eye bright and shining as he followed the direction of his pointing finger. “Do you see, son?… Pennsylvania…
