“It was a joyous home that day, if you don’t care how you talk.  All it needed was a crepe necktie on the knob of the front door.  That ornery old hound, Angus, got in from his work at six, spotty with paint and smelling of oil and turpentine, but cheerful as a new father.  He washed up, ridding himself of at least a third of the paint smell, looked in at Ellabelle’s door to say, ’What!  Not feeling well, mamma?  Now, that’s too bad!’ ate a hearty dinner with me, young Angus not having been heard from further, and fell asleep in a gold armchair at ten minutes past nine.

“He was off again next morning.  Ellabelle’s health was still breaking down, but young Angus sneaked in and partook of a meagre lunch with me.  He was highly vexed with his pa.  ’He’s nothing but a scoundrelly old liar,’ he says to me, ’saying that he gives me but a pittance.  He’s always given me a whale of an allowance.  Why, actually, I’ve more than once had money left over at the end of the quarter.  And now his talk about saving money!  I tell you he has some other reason than money for breaking the mater’s heart.’  The boy looked very shrewd as he said this.

“That night at quitting time he was strangely down at the place with his own car to fetch his father home.  ‘I’ll trust you this once,’ says the old man, getting in and looking more then ever like a dissolute working man.  On the way they passed this here yellow-haired daughter of the old train-robber that there had been talk of the boy making a match with.  She was driving her own car and looked neither to right nor left.

“‘Not speaking?’ says old Angus.

“‘She didn’t see us,’ says the boy.

“‘She’s ashamed of your father,’ says the old man.

“‘She’s not,’ says the boy.

“‘You know it,’ says the old scoundrel.

“‘I’ll show her,’ says his son.

“Well, we had another cheerful evening, with Ellabelle sending word to old Angus that she wanted me to have the necklace of brilliants with the sapphire pendant, and the two faithful maids was to get suitable keepsakes out of the rest of her jewels, and would her son always wear the seal ring with her hair in it that she had given him when he was twenty?  And the old devil started in to tell how much he could have saved by taking charge of the work in his own house, and how a union man nowadays would do just enough to keep within the law, and so on; but he got to yawning his head off and retired at nine, complaining that his valet that morning had cleaned and pressed his overalls.  Young Angus looked very shrewd at me and again says:  ’The old liar!  He has some other reason than money.  He can’t fool me.’

“I kind of gathered from both of them the truth of what happened the next day.  Young Angus himself showed up at the job about nine A.M., with a bundle under his arm.  ‘Where’s the old man?’ his father heard him demand of the carpenter, he usually speaking of old Angus as the governor.