And then the baby worried him. They had given the boy his name, Ethan, but they prefixed it with the other name of John, which had belonged to Garwood's father. Garwood had mildly protested against the name of Ethan because he didn't care for biblical names, though Emily had insisted that Ethan was not a biblical name. The argument had been settled, at least to Garwood's satisfaction, for he claimed to have found the name in the Old Testament, but with a firmness for which Emily said the name itself stood, she insisted that the mere mention of it in Holy Writ did not constitute it a biblical name. But though young John Ethan kept his grandfather's name he never found a way to his grandfather's graces, at least he had not done so yet, and this only added another complication to the many in which Emily found her life enmeshed.
And so this evening Harkness took refuge in his senility and his troubles.
"Well," he ventured with a sigh that he knew was pathetic, "if I could only afford it I'd take you and the boy away for the summer, but I'm poor now and old."
"I couldn't leave Jerome just now, father, but this talk about your being poor and old is absurd, absurd--and I want you to quit it. Why don't you go away this summer? Go back to New Hampshire for a rest. It would do you a world of good, and you've always said you were going as soon as you could get away from the bank."
She checked herself, perceiving that she had hit on an unfortunate subject, but her father replied with a return of his old dry humor:
"Yes, the bank was the principal obstacle, and that's been removed now."
He set his lips bitterly, and picked up his book again. There was silence in the library, and Emily rested. Now and then her father glanced at her, but she did not move. She lay back in her chair, relaxed in every fiber. He stood her inaction as long as any man could, and then demanded:
"Why don't you do something? Ain't you going to read?"
She did rouse herself, obedient to his whims, but she made an excuse:
"I must go up and see how the baby's getting along."
"No; leave the door open for Jerome when you come up, will you?"
And then he was left to the expectant silence that oppresses a household when it awaits the coming of one of its members before it can settle down for the night. It was after midnight when Garwood came. He threw the reeking end of his cigar into the yard and toiled up the stairs breathing heavily.