“Shall I get you a drink of water?” said Archie.

“What the devil,” demanded Mr. Brewster, “do you imagine I want with a drink of water?”

“Well—­” Archie hesitated delicately.  “I had a sort of idea that you had been feeling the strain a bit.  I mean to say, rush of modern life and all that sort of thing—­”

“What are you doing in my room?” said Mr. Brewster, changing the subject.

“Well, I came to tell you something, and I came in here and was waiting for you, and I saw some chappie biffing about in the dark, and I thought it was a burglar or something after some of your things, so, thinking it over, I got the idea that it would be a fairly juicy scheme to land on him with both feet.  No idea it was you, old thing!  Frightfully sorry and all that.  Meant well!”

Mr. Brewster sighed deeply.  He was a just man, and he could not but realise that, in the circumstances, Archie had behaved not unnaturally.

“Oh, well!” he said.  “I might have known something would go wrong.”

“Awfully sorry!”

“It can’t be helped.  What was it you wanted to tell me?” He eyed his son-in-law piercingly.  “Not a cent over twenty dollars!” he said coldly.

Archie hastened to dispel the pardonable error.

“Oh, it wasn’t anything like that,” he said.  “As a matter of fact, I think it’s a good egg.  It has bucked me up to no inconsiderable degree.  I was dining with Lucille just now, and, as we dallied with the food-stuffs, she told me something which—­well, I’m bound to say, it made me feel considerably braced.  She told me to trot along and ask you if you would mind—­”

“I gave Lucille a hundred dollars only last Tuesday.”

Archie was pained.

“Adjust this sordid outlook, old thing!” he urged.  “You simply aren’t anywhere near it.  Right off the target, absolutely!  What Lucille told me to ask you was if you would mind—­at some tolerably near date—­being a grandfather!  Rotten thing to be, of course,” proceeded Archie commiseratingly, “for a chappie of your age, but there it is!”

Mr. Brewster gulped.

“Do you mean to say—?”

“I mean, apt to make a fellow feel a bit of a patriarch.  Snowy hair and what not.  And, of course, for a chappie in the prime of life like you—­”

“Do you mean to tell me—?  Is this true?”

“Absolutely!  Of course, speaking for myself, I’m all for it.  I don’t know when I’ve felt more bucked.  I sang as I came up here—­ absolutely warbled in the elevator.  But you—­”

A curious change had come over Mr. Brewster.  He was one of those men who have the appearance of having been hewn out of the solid rock, but now in some indescribable way he seemed to have melted.  For a moment he gazed at Archie, then, moving quickly forward, he grasped his hand in an iron grip.

“This is the best news I’ve ever had!” he mumbled.

“Awfully good of you to take it like this,” said Archie cordially.  “I mean, being a grandfather—­”