In token of this there would sometimes creep over his brown old face a soft light that made it seem as if there must still be within him somewhere the child he had once been; as if, perhaps, he looked into the little boy as into a mirror that threw the sunlight of his own boyhood into his time-worn face.

Side by side, before the old man's fire, they would talk or muse, since they were friendly enough to be silent if they liked.

Only one confidence the little boy could not bring himself to make: he could not tell the old man that he no longer felt hard toward him, as once he had done, for his coldness to his father; that he had divined--and felt a great shame for--the true reason of that coldness.

But he thought the old man must understand without words.

It was hardly a matter to be talked of.
About his other affairs, especially his early imaginings and difficulties, he was free to talk; about coming to the Feet, and the Front Room, and being washed in the blood, and born again--matters that made the old man wish their intimacy had not been so long delayed.
But now they made up for lost time.