Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/78

 room. She hurried to the door as she replied. "Oh; in there," he returned. "All right; stay there." And, as she retreated, he came into the room and closed the door behind him. "Forgot you came on business," he said, looking at the papers which she held. "Business," he repeated to himself; then, at her, "All right; let me hear it."

He sank down into the chair before his desk which was a swivel chair that tipped back when he threw his weight into it. In order to keep balanced, he hunched slightly forward and with the toe of his shoe he pulled out the desk drawer nearest to the floor and rested his leg upon it. There are attitudes taken by very old persons which may suddenly shear years from them in spite of wrinkled skin and whiteness of hair and dullness of eye; for when an old man forgets for the moment that he is aged, a throwback in his mind causes him to follow a physical habit discarded decades earlier. Lucas Cullen was following such a habit now, resting his foot upon the drawer, hunching his big shoulders toward his granddaughter and with one of his large, bony hands half clenched upon his desk. His other hand went to his forehead, and he combed his hair with his fingers; he had as much hair as ever he had had in the days when his thick, intractable mat was his mark of surest identification in newspaper cartoons.

Ethel felt that she was seeing him almost as he must have been in the vigor of his great deeds of the time of the Tremont House dinner and the cockades on the wall. He took his hand from his hair and, without glancing away from her, he fumbled in a pigeonhole, found a big cigar and put it between his lips, chewing it and leaving it unlighted. Vacancy had come to his