In the front hall they assisted each other with overcoats; the little, withered butler took the boy’s luggage down the brown-stone steps to the car. A moment later father and son were spinning along Fifth Avenue toward Forty-second Street. As usual, this ordeal of departure forced John Cleland to an unnatural, off-hand gaiety at the crisis, as though the parting amounted to nothing. "Going to be a good kid in school, Jim?" he asked, casually humorous. The boy nodded and smiled. "That’s right. And, Jim, stick to your Algebra, no matter how you hate it. I hated it too.... Going to get on your class hockey team?" "I’ll do my best." "Right. Try for the ball team, too. And, Jim?" "Yes, father?" "You’re all right so far. You know what’s good and what’s bad." "Yes, sir." "No matter what happens, you can always come to me. You thoroughly understand that." "Yes, father." "You’ve never known what it is to be afraid of me, have you?" The boy smiled broadly; said no. "Never be afraid of me, Jim. That’s one thing I couldn’t stand. I’m always here. All I’m here on earth for is you! Do you really understand me?" "Yes, father." Red-capped porter, father and son halted near the crowded train gate inside the vast railroad station. Cleland Senior said briskly: "Good-bye, old chap. See you at Easter. Good luck! Send me anything you write in the way of verses and stories." Their clasped hands fell apart; the boy went through the gate, followed by his porter and by numerous respectable and negligible travelling citizens, male and female, bound for destinations doubtless interesting to them. To John Cleland they were merely mechanically moving impedimenta which obscured the retreating figure of his only son and irritated him to that extent. And when the schoolboy cap of that only son disappeared, engulfed in the crowd, John Cleland went back to his car, back to his empty, old-fashioned brownstone house, seated himself in the library that his wife had made lovely, and picked up the _Times_, which he had not read aloud at breakfast. He had been sitting there more than an hour before he thought of reading the paper so rigidly spread across his knees. But he was not interested in what he read. The battle fleet, it seemed, was preparing to sail from Port-of-Spain; Mr. Taft was preparing to launch his ponderous candidacy at the fat head of the Republican party; a woman had been murdered in the Newark marshes; the subway muddle threatened to become more muddled; somebody desired to motor from New York to Paris; President Roosevelt and Mr. Cortelyou had been in consultation about something or other; German newspapers accused the United States of wasting its natural resources; Scotti was singing _Scarpia_ in "Tosca"; a new music hall had been built in the Bronx——