Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/38

28 gently thrust aside as a harmless elderly woman. And besides, there were secrets which her son must never know. So, by the time Harold came from the library again, the traces of tears were not discernible, except to a very careful observer. And he did not observe his mother carefully; his eyes only glanced at her on their way to the North Loamshire Herald, lying on the table near her, which he took up with his left hand, as he said,

"Gad! what a wreck poor father is! Paralysis, eh? Terribly shrunk and shaken—crawls about among his books and beetles as usual, though. Well, it's a slow and easy death. But he's not much over sixty-five, is he?"

"Sixty-seven, counting by birthdays; but your father was born old, I think," said Mrs. Transome, a little flushed with the determination not to show any unasked-for feeling.

Her son did not notice her. All the time he had been speaking his eyes had been running down the columns of the newspaper.

"But your little boy, Harold—where is he? How is it he has not come with you?"

"O, I left him behind, in town," said Harold, still looking at the paper. "My man Dominic will bring him, with the rest of the luggage. Ah, I see it is