From year to year the perfect father came to Edom to be a week with his children.  And though from visit to visit there were external variations in him, his genial and refreshing spirit was changeless.  When his garments were appreciably less regal, even to the kind eye of his younger son; when his hat was not all one might wish; the boots less than excellent; the priceless watch-chain absent, or moored to a mere bunch of aimless keys, though the bounty from his pockets was an irregular and minute trickle of copper exclusively, the little boy strutted as proudly by his side, worshipping him as loyally, as when these outer affairs were quite the reverse.  Yet he could not avoid being sensible of the fluctuations.

One year the parent would come with the long hair of one who, having been brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopaeia, and who would out of love for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all for a nominal consideration.

Another year he would be shorn of the sweeping moustache and much of the tawny hair, and the little boy would understand that he had travelled extensively with a Mr. Haverly, singing his songs each evening in large cities, and being spoken of as “the phenomenal California baritone.”  His admiring son envied the fortunate people of those cities.

Again he would be touring the world of cities with some simple article of household use which, from his luxurious barouche, he was merely introducing for the manufacturers—­perhaps a rare cleaning-fluid, a silver-polish, or that ingenious tool which will sharpen knives and cut glass, this being, indeed, one of his prized staples.  It appeared—­so the little boy heard him tell Milo Barrus—­that few men could resist buying a tool with which he actually cut a pane of glass into strips before their eyes; that one beholding the sea of hands waving frantically up to him with quarters in them, after his demonstration, would have reason to believe that all men had occasion to slice off a strip of glass every day or so.  Instead of this, as an observer of domestic and professional life, he believed that out of the thousands to whom he had sold this tool, not ten had ever needed to cut glass, nor ever would.

There was another who continued indifferent to the personal estate of this father.  This was Grandfather Delcher, who had never seen him since that bleak day when he had tried to bury the memory of his daughter.  When the perfect father came to Edom the grandfather went to his room and kept there so closely that neither ever beheld the other.  The little boy was much puzzled by this apparently intentional avoidance of each other by two men of such rare distinction, and during the early visits of his father he was fruitful of suggestion for bringing them together.  But when he came to understand that they remained apart by wish of the elder man, he was troubled.  He