It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of
friends; but something that was in part the delicacy of his mother, in
part the austerity of his father, held him aloof from all. It is a
fact, and a strange one, that among his contemporaries Hermiston's son
was thought to be a chip of the old block. "You're a friend of Archie
Weir's?" said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual
flippancy and more than his usual insight: "I know Weir. but I never met
Archie." No one had met Archie, a malady most incident to only sons.
He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; it seemed he was abroad
in a world from which the very hope of intimacy was banished; and he
looked round about him on the concourse of his fellow-students, and
forward to the trivial days and acquaintances that were to come, without
hope or interest.
As time went on, the tough and rough old sinner felt himself drawn to
the son of his loins and sole continuator of his new family, with
softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly
impotent to express.
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