Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/70

 myself lately. . . It's rather peaceful up here, isn't it?"

Mark was fond of his father and was without any particular awe of him. Father never nagged a fellow or preached at him.

"Your mother," said the Reverend Mr. Eaton, "said that if you were working I mustn't interrupt you."

"I'm not," said Mark hastily. "I don't come up here to work, anyway. Take this chair. It's the best I've got."

"Thanks," said Mr. Eaton, and he seated himself in a leisurely way, and at the same time he nodded in his son's direction a couple of times and smiled mischievously. "I've sometimes pretended that I was working behind closed doors, just so as to be let alone . . . I've nibbled through a good many novels that way . . . Do you know, there's one thing I hold in common with the Catholics, and that's confession—owning up. Now, I can't very well go to a priest, but I might very well go to a son of my own who was going to be a preacher and own up to something that for the present I'd rather that nobody else should know."

Mark felt at once flattered and puzzled.

"It's about your brother John," said the Reverend Mr. Eaton. "Do you remember the day he didn't come home and I posted off to find him?"