“Father!” cried Tommy. His plans, not very elaborate, were knocked into a cocked hat. Misery, indefinite but poignant, filled him. “Thomas!” gasped Mr. Leigh. He was more startled than his son. To Tommy his father's look was one of guilt. And a guilty look on that face was like turning the calcium-light on the secret. “I--I had to see Colonel Willetts on bank business,” stammered Mr. Leigh. He glanced at Tommy uncomfortably and quickly looked away. Then he said, apologetically, almost pleadingly: “I thought it expedient, while I was there, to speak about your errand to New York. I--I gave him my opinion of the--investment.” “But I asked you--I hoped you would not speak about it,” said Tommy, unhappy rather than annoyed. And then, with the illogicality of sorrow, Tommy thought that his father knew so little about the company that any advice he might give about the investment could not be strictly honest advice. “Colonel Willetts is a director of the Marshall National, and our bank has close relations with it. I have done no harm to you, Thomas.” Tommy was frowning because of his own disinclination to recognize ungrudgingly that his father had been prompted by loyalty and love. Old people were like that. And now his father was actually and visibly afraid of incurring the displeasure of the son for whom he had done so much--too much! And that son actually was thinking of his own grievances! Moreover, the damage, if any, was done. “You meant for the best, dad!” said Tommy, with a smile, and held out his hand. “I expect you will have to wait till I grow up before I get some sense.” His father's hand clutched his so tightly that Tommy's resentment turned into remorse. “I'll make the points you told me last night, dad. They are mighty good points!” And he meant it. “Good luck, Thomas,” said the old man, more composedly, and walked away. Tommy looked after him, and for the first time in his life realized that Mr. Leigh's shoulders were inclined to stoop. Years and years of bending over his ledger had left on him the mark of the modern galley slave. Tommy's dislike of bookkeeping rose on the spot to a positive hatred. Also, the stoop showed the weight of a burden heavy beyond words! He decided that the moment the money was paid back he would ask his father to move to Day-ton, far away from the bank, and live with his only son, who by that time should be able to support both. “He will never leave the old house,” decided Tommy next. It meant so much to him: the house where Tommy's mother had lived, where Tommy was born, where she died. The sentiment and also the wing-clipping habit of a lifetime made sudden changes dangerous to old age. “A hell of a world!” came next. Well, work that a man could take an interest in was invented so that a man need not care whether or not it was a hell of a world. CHAPTER XX