He raised his head and looked at her in solemn silence till she began to feel dreadfully confused. Then he bent again. "Do you notice anything else?" "N--no; unless your hair's got thicker. But that's not likely at your time of life." "It is _not_ likely," said he. "It is most improbable--in fact, it is practically impossible; but it is thicker." He rubbed his chin and gazed at her with the queerest look. Mary had known him since he trundled a hoop, but she never remembered him go on like this before. As for Heriot, he seemed to be debating whether he should spring something still more surprising on her or not. But she looked so uncomfortable already, so totally without the least clue to his mysterious words, so unconscious of anything stranger about him than his shirt-sleeves and loss of weight, that he only uttered something between a gasp and a sigh, and, turning away from her, took up his brushes to smooth his augmented hairs. "I'll be down to breakfast in a jiffy," he said. Miss Walkingshaw thought that an odd kind of phrase for Heriot to be using. CHAPTER IV Andrew no longer walked to the office with his father in the mornings. Not that _he_ had anything to do with the altered custom: in fact, he was always most careful to assure his friends that he had more than once waited as long as five minutes to give his father the opportunity of having his company--if he was wishing it. But Mr. Walkingshaw was never less than ten minutes late nowadays. On this particular morning he set forth a full half-hour after his son. He had been very absent-minded after his talk with his sister,--not even Mrs. Dunbar could keep his attention for more than a moment,--and he had sat for the best part of twenty minutes thoughtfully putting on his boots. One or two acquaintances who saw him on the way from his house to his office often recalled his demeanor that morning. Now he would loiter along with bent shoulders, his hands behind his back, trailing his umbrella and brooding as though he contemplated bankruptcy. Then suddenly his pace would quicken, the umbrella whirled round and round like a Catherine wheel, and with his head held jauntily and the merriest smile he would swagger along like a young blood of twenty-six who had just been accepted by an heiress. And then abruptly he would lapse into his mournful gait. "I want to see Mr. Andrew," said he, as soon as he was seated in his private room. The junior partner entered with a melancholy visage and a reproachful eye. "Oh, you've come at last," he remarked, too quietly to be rude, too pointedly to be pleasant. But his father seemed not to have heard. "Sit down, sit down," he said; and then in an earnest manner and with the gravest face began, "I've something to tell you, Andrew, that I think you ought to know." Andrew's visage relaxed. This gravity promised better than anything his father's behavior had led him to expect of late.