The room, too, was as greatly changed as its inmate. But for a bowl of crimson roses on the book-shelf it might have been called austere. The Persian rug had gone, the writing-table was bare of the familiar manuscript. The book-shelves had disappeared to make way for a piano. The walls were still brown, and from them Lely's Cavalier looked down with faintly ironical eyes upon his descendants. It was the only picture on the walls. "Where are the books then, dad?" Ernie asked. "I sent them down to Fowler's," the other answered. "I've done with books--all except those." He pointed to a single row, perhaps a dozen in all, among which Ernie recognized the blue backs of the Golden Treasury Series, the old edition of Wordsworth, homely as the poet himself, and a little brown-paper bound new Testament. Ernie sat down. Now he understood that pathetic look in his mother's eyes. His father was no longer dependent on her; and she was missing that dependency as only a woman who has given her life to propping an invalid can miss it. "Have you joined the Friends, dad?" he asked earnestly. The old man shook his head. "I shall never join another sect. They're nearest the Truth, it seems to me--a long way nearest. But they aren't there yet. None of us are." Ernie considered his father, sitting opposite him as of old, and yet how changed! In those familiar blue eyes he detected now a dry twinkle, as of an imp dancing amid autumn leaves. Suddenly the imp leapt out and tickled him. Ernie flung back in his chair and laughed. The old man opposite nodded sympathetically. Then the door in the hall opened. Somebody had entered the passage, and was stumbling over the bag Ernie had left there. Ernie ceased to laugh; and the imp to twinkle. "That's your brother," said the old man almost harshly. Ernie made no move. In the passage outside Alf was shifting the bag--with curses. "Does he live here still?" asked Ernie, low. "Yes," said his father. "He's got a garage of his own now. He's getting on." "Shall I go and see him?" asked Ernie. "There's nothing to see," his father answered in that new dry note of his. "But you'd better go and see it perhaps," he added. Ernie rose reluctantly and went into the passage. Alf's voice came from the kitchen, dogmatic and domineering. "Him or me. That's flat," he was saying. "House won't hold us both." Ernie swaggered into the kitchen. Alf was standing before the fire, very smart and well-groomed. He wore a double-breasted waistcoat, festooned by a watch-chain, from which hung a bronze cross. A little man still, with an immense head, his shoulders appeared broad in their padded coat; but the creases in his waistcoat betrayed his hollow chest and defective physique, and his legs were small and almost shrunken in their last year's Sunday trousers. Ernie advanced on his brother. "All right, Alf, old son," he said. "No need to get yer shirt out. I'm not a-goin to force myself on no one."