Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/79

 tactfully as possible, I brought up the subject of father.

When you've a pater who's been flattered with the spread of news print that had been lavished on Winton Scofield, he's a bit difficult to mention; but I managed to drift in a remark about him and I certainly detonated something. Fred had been storing too much inside of him concerning father and had required only the gentlest tap on the fuse to cause him to explode.

"Isn't he absolutely ludicrous!" Fred shot at me. "Age, damn it, Steve, age is no disgrace. It ought to be the noblest, most dignified stage of a man's development. What does Shakespeare say about age, 'His silver hairs will purchase good opinion!' And Byron"

I let him rave on as it seemed to relieve him; I knew he wasn't talking to me so much as he was rehearsing father.

"—he dyed his silver hairs twenty years back; and about the time the tango came in, he began pumping his face full of paraffin. Occasionally some of it slipped down in his cheek toward his chin.—Now I suppose you've heard of his rejuvenation operation."

I thought for a while and admitted that I had. "Wasn't it a success?" I ventured.