Now he waved me to a chair with the well-kept white hand that I knew so well, fringed at the wrist, as it was invariably, with snowy linen.
“Thomas,” he said, without leading to the point, “I am worried about you.”
“What is it, Mr. Griffith?” I asked.
He regarded me fixedly for a moment and then said, “You know well enough what it is, my boy. It is your profession, your status and mine.”
I was nonplussed for the moment and said, “I do not quite understand what you are implying. Have I done something you disapprove of?”
He did not relax his stare but smiled a little and said, “Thomas, in some ways I am in loco parentis towards you since your good father died. I have no son and it has always been understood that when I retire you will take over from me here. Ours is a family firm and th
