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A silence. Then, heavily: “Yeh.”

Five minutes.

“Look at those people laying on the grass. Shouldn’t think it was warm enough for that…. Now they’re getting up.”

A group of equestrians passed along the bridle path on the opposite side of the lagoon. They made a frieze against the delicate spring greenery. The coats of the women were scarlet, vivid green, arresting, stimulating.

“Riders.”

“Yes.”

“Good weather for riding.”

A man was fishing near by. “Good weather for fishing.”

“Yes.”

“Wonder what time it is, anyway.” From a pocket, deep-buried, came forth a great gold blob of a watch. “I’ve got one minute to eleven.”

Old man Minick dragged forth a heavy globe. “Mm. I’ve got eleven.”

“Little fast, I guess.”

Old man Minick shook off this conversation impatiently. This wasn’t conversation. This was oral death, though he did not put it thus. He joined the other men. They were discussing Spiritualism. He listened, ventured an opinion, was heard respectfully and then combated mercilessly. He rose to the verbal fight, and won it.

“Let’s see,” said one of the old men. “You’re not living at the Grant Home, are you?”

“No,” old man Minick made reply, proudly. “I live with my son and his wife. They wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Hm. Like to be independent myself.”

“Lonesome, ain’t it? Over there?”

“Lonesome! Say, Mr.–what’d you say your name was? Minick? Mine’s Hughes–I never was lonesome in my life ‘cept for six months when I lived with my daughter and her husband and their five children. Yes, sir. That’s what I call lonesome, in an eight-room flat.”

George and Nettie said, “It’s doing you good, Father, being out in the air so much.” His eyes were brighter, his figure straighter, his colour better. It was that day he had held forth so eloquently on the emigration question. He had to read a lot–papers and magazines and one thing and another–to keep up. He devoured all the books and pamphlets about bond issues and national finances brought home by George. In the Park he was considered an authority on bonds and banking. He and a retired real-estate man named Mowry sometimes debated a single question for weeks. George and Nettie, relieved, thought he ambled to the Park and spent senile hours with his drooling old friends discussing nothing amiably and witlessly. This while he was eating strong meat, drinking strong drink.

Summer sped. Was past. Autumn held a new dread for old man Minick. When winter came where should he go? Where should he go? Not back to the five-room flat all day, and the little back bedroom, and nothingness. In his mind there rang a childish old song they used to sing at school. A silly song:

Where do all the birdies go?
I know. I know.

But he didn’t know. He was terror-stricken. October came and went. With the first of November the Park became impossible, even at noon, and with two overcoats and the sweater. The first frost was a black frost for him. He scanned the heavens daily for rain or snow. There was a cigar store and billiard room on the corner across the boulevard and there he sometimes went, with a few of his Park cronies, to stand behind the players’ chairs and watch them at pinochle or rum. But this was a dull business. Besides, the Grant men never came there. They had card rooms of their own.

He turned away from this smoky little den on a drab November day, sick at heart. The winter. He tried to face it, and at what he saw he shrank and was afraid.

He reached the apartment and went around to the rear, dutifully. His rubbers were wet and muddy and Nettie’s living-room carpet was a fashionable grey. The back door was unlocked. It was Canary’s day downstairs, he remembered. He took off his rubbers in the kitchen and passed into the dining room. Voices. Nettie had company. Some friends, probably, for tea. He turned to go to his room, but stopped at hearing his own name. Father Minick. Father Minick. Nettie’s voice.