Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/145

 to his lonely grave. He was too old to take root in a new affection. Yes, he was almost twenty, now. It was too late. He was a failure and a castaway in life.

By the time he was convalescent, he was also resigned, though he sat in his room like a life-prisoner in his cell. The familiar walls, in their faded paper streaked with the leak of rains, shut out the world that had persecuted him. He would study here, happy among his books; he would become a university professor, devote his life to learning, and be safe behind grey-stone walls covered with ivy. One room would suffice for him—even a room like this, though it should have a study chair and a desk like his father's and a student's couch, instead of this old oval parlour table, this dining-room chair upholstered in imitation leather and sagging in the seat, and this yellow, boarding-house bed, machine-carved, with a varnish scalded to a milky white where the cleanly housekeeper had used boiling water on it. He would never be happy again, but he would be quiet and contented. It was in this mood that he received Conroy—sitting with a black bandage over his eyes, for the influenza had weakened them and he was not allowed to use them yet. And Conroy, guiltily silent about the scene in the room at Residence, did not tell him that Margaret had refused to see him, too, as a result of that incident; he contented himself with awkward inquiries about Don's departing pains, and left a bag of oranges as a peace-offering when he went.

Don ate them stolidly. He had seen enough in his cousin's room to understand that Conroy was wasting himself in dissipations, and doing it with that