The tears dripped from his jaw to the limp breast of his coat.  Mrs. Egg felt that he must be horrible, naked, like a doll carved of coconut bark Adam had sent home from Havana.  He was darker than Adam even.  In the twilight the hollows of his face were sheer black.  The room was gray.  Mrs. Egg wished that the film would hurry and show something brightly lit.

The dreary whisper mourned, “Grain for the grim reaper’s sickle, that’s what I am.  Tares mostly.  When I’m gone you lay me alongside your mamma and——­”

“Supper’s ready, Mis’ Egg,” said the cook.

Supper was odious.  He sat crumbling bits of toast into a bowl of hot milk and whispering feeble questions about dead folk or the business of the vast dairy farm.  The girls had been too kind, he said.

“I couldn’t help but feel that if they knew all about me——­”

“They’re nice sociable girls,” Mrs. Egg panted, dizzy with dislike of her veal.  She went on:  “And they like a good cry, never havin’ had nothin’ to cry for.”

His eyes opened wide in the lamplight, gray brilliance sparkled.  Mrs. Egg stiffened in her chair, meeting the look.

He wailed, “I gave you plenty to cry for, daughter.”  The tears hurt her, of course.

“There’s a picture of Dammy in the movies,” she gasped.  “I’m goin’ in to see it.  You better come.  It’ll cheer you, Papa.”

She wanted to recall the offer too late.  In the car she felt chilly.  He sank into a corner of the tonneau like a thrown laprobe.  Mrs. Egg talked loudly about Adam all the way to town and shouted directions to the driving farmhand in order that the whisper might not start.  The manager of the theatre had saved a box for her and came to usher her to its discomfort.  But all her usual pleasure was gone.  She nodded miserably over the silver-gilt rail at friends.  She knew that people were craning from far seats.  Her bulk and her shadow effaced the man beside her.  He seemed to cower a little.  At eight the show began, and Mrs. Egg felt darkness as a blessing, although the shimmer from the screen ran like phosphorus over the bald head, and a flash of white between two parts of the advertisement showed the dark wrinkles of his brow.

“Like the pictures, Papa?”

“I don’t see well enough to take much pleasure in ’em, Myrtle.”

A whirling globe announced the beginning of the weekly.  Mrs. Egg forgot her burdens.  She was going to see Adam.  She took a peppermint from the bag in her hand and set her teeth in its softness, applauded a view of the President and the arrival of an ambassador in New York.  Then the greenish letters declared:  “The fleet leaves Guantanamo training ground,” and her eyes hurt with staring.  The familiar lines of anchored battleships appeared with a motion of men in white on the gray decks.  The screen showed a race of boats which melted without warning to a mass of white uniforms packed about the raised square of a roped-in Platform below guns and a turret clouded with men.  Two tanned giants in wrestling tights scrambled under the ropes.  There was a flutter of caps.