Two CONCERNING FATHERS
Bobby knelt down beside him, but there was no doubt. The man was dead.
A last moment of consciousness, that sudden question, and then—the end.
Rather apologetically, Bobby put his hand into the dead man’s pocketand, drawing out a silk handkerchief, he spread it reverently¹ over thedead face. There was nothing more he could do.
Then he noticed that in his action he had jerked something else out ofthe pocket. It was a photograph and in the act of replacing it he glanced atthe pictured face.
It was a woman’s face, strangely haunting in quality. A fair woman withwide-apart eyes. She seemed little more than a girl, certainly under thirty,but it was the arresting quality of her beauty rather than the beauty itselfthat seized upon the boy’s imagination. It was the kind of face, he thought,not easy to forget.
Gently and reverently, he replaced the photograph in the pocket fromwhich it had come, then he sat down again to wait for the doctor’s return.
The time passed very slowly—or at least so it seemed to the waiting boy.
Also, he had just remembered something. He had promised his father toplay the organ at the evening service at six o’clock and it was now tenminutes to six. Naturally, his father would understand the circumstances,but all the same he wished that he had remembered to send a message bythe doctor. The Rev². Thomas Jones was a man of extremely nervous tem-perament. He was, par³ excellence⁵, a fusser, and when he fussed, his digest-ive apparatus⁶ collapsed⁷ and he suffered agonizing⁸ pain. Bobby, though heconsidered his father a pitiful old ass⁴, was nevertheless extremely fond ofhim. The Rev. Thomas, on the other hand, considered his fourth son a piti-ful young ass, and with less

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