Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/288

Rh "I'm overcome," said Floyd, "Thank you both; thank Lydia for me. I feel like a father myself. Look here; when can I come round and see my namesake?"

"Oh, I don't know—I don't know much about such things yet. But I guess any time; stop in to-morrow. The christening's to be in three weeks; you'll be on hand?"

"I'll be sure. Wait. What kind of a present would appeal to him most?"

"Oh, you must n't begin right off giving him presents. You'll spoil him."

"You've got to risk that from godfathers," said Floyd.

He put on his hat and went out to inspect spoons, napkin-rings, and mugs; he decided finally that nothing could be more satisfactory than a mug, properly inscribed. The mug suggested other things; returning to the office, he called up his grandfather's farm and gave orders that the prize Jersey should be sent at once to Mr. Floyd Halket Lee. The fact that Lydia was the mother of a boy drove all depressing business cares from Floyd's mind. He alternated, in thinking of it, between elation and a shadowed kind of happiness. Her wish to name her son after him revived his failing romance; the fact that she had a son seemed somehow to exhibit more pitilessly to his mind than anything yet the folly of his romance. He felt vaguely that the birth of the boy meant the gradual withdrawal of her intimate interest in himself—an interest which so long as she had only Stewart she was able to give, but which now must be very intermittent. Her wish to name the child for him pleased him—yet as he thought, even it had its tantalizing incompleteness; if he could only feel that it had been prompted by the desire to please and commemorate the man whom next to her husband she loved, and not by a grateful sense that it was proper so to honor one who had saved her husband's life! Then he knew that there must have been in her thoughts some-