"Finished your ramble?" he enquired pleasantly.
Ruxton returned the smile and flung himself upon a long old settle before he replied.
"The ramble is finished," he said, preparing to light a cigar.
Their eyes met. The father knew there remained something as yet unspoken behind the reply. He waited. But Ruxton's decision was not yet taken.
"Finished your letters yet?" he enquired from behind a cloud of smoke.
The bright blue eyes surveying him twinkled.
Sir Andrew knew by the tone that ultimately the unspoken word was to come. He glanced down at his papers with a sigh.
"I believe, after all, I shall have to break with some of my old-fashioned habits. It is an awful thing to contemplate at my time of life. I think I must be getting old. The burden of private correspondence begins to weigh. I have always held that a private secretary for such a purpose is waste of money, and the undesirable admission of another into one's private life."
Ruxton stretched out his long legs. His bulk almost completely filled the settle.
"It's hard work for Yorkshire to change its habit. A feature applying pretty generally to the Briton. I only wonder a man of your vast fortune has clung to such habits so long. I, who possess but a twentieth of the fortune you possess, find I cannot do without one."
"But then you are a political man," his father smiled drily.
Ruxton nodded. "And in consequence I am saved much heartburning."
"Yes." Sir Andrew gathered up a sheaf of sealed envelopes and flung them into his post basket. "Twenty-five letters. Answers to cranks. Answers to those philanthropists who love to do good with other folks' money. Answers to beggars, to would-be blackmailers, to public institutions whose chief asset is a carefully compiled list of likely subscribers, and then--those whom we have decided to encourage--the inventors. Here is our friend Charles Smith." He picked up the last letter remaining to be dealt with. "What am I going to say to him?"
The old man scratched one shaggy eyebrow with the point of his penholder--one of his signs of doubt and perplexity.
"This secrecy business adds importance to the reply," he added.
His father passed the letter across, and sat watching the concentrated brows of his son, while the latter re-perused the contents.