“I told him right away. I had to do it. The old boy was sober by then, and crazy for a shot of booze. That was Monday. He wanted to go out and get pied; but when I told him about his boy, he begun to cry. And he ain’t touched a drop since then.” “You haven’t let him?” “Sure I’d let him. But he wouldn’t. I always told you the class was there. He says to me: ‘I can’t let my boy see me in this state, you know. Have to straighten up a bit. I’ll need new clothes.’” “I noticed his new suit.” “Sure,” Sheener agreed. “I bought it for him.” “Out of his savings?” “He ain’t been saving much lately.” “Sheener,” I asked, “how much does he owe you? For money loaned and spent for him.” Sheener said hotly: “He don’t owe me a cent.” “I know. But how much have you spent on him?” “If I hadn’t have give it to him, I’d have blowed it somehow. He needed it.” I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheener would not tell me. “I’m telling you, he’s my pal,” he said. “I’m not looking for anything out of this.” “If this millionaire son of his has any decency, he’ll make it up to you.” “He don’t know a thing about me,” said Sheener, “except my name. I’ve just wrote as though I knowed the old guy, here in the house, see. Said he was sick, and all.” “And the boy gets in to-night?” “Midnight,” said Sheener, and Evans, from his chair, echoed: “Midnight!” Then asked with a certain stiff anxiety: “Do I look all right, Sheener? Look all right to see my boy?” “Say,” Sheener told him. “You look like the Prince of Wales.” He went across to where the other sat and gripped him by the shoulder. “You look like the king o’ the world.” Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers picked and twisted; and Sheener sat down on the bed beside him and began to soothe and comfort the man as though he were a child. V The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at eleven o’clock we left Sheener’s room for the station. There was a flower stand on the corner, and Sheener bought a red carnation and fixed it in the old man’s buttonhole. “That’s the way the boy’ll know him,” he told me. “They ain’t seen each other for--since the boy was a kid.” Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was trembling and feeble, yet held his head high. We took the subway, reached the station, sat down for a space in the waiting room. But Evans was impatient; he wanted to be out in the train shed, and we went out there and walked up and down before the gate. I noticed that he was studying Sheener with some embarrassment in his eyes. Sheener was, of course, an unprepossessing figure. Lean, swarthy, somewhat flashy of dress, he looked what he was. He was my friend, of course, and I was able to look beneath the exterior. But it seemed to me that sight of him distressed Evans. In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: “I say, you know, I want to meet my boy alone. You won’t mind standing back a bit when the train comes in.”