Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as
the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...
that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.
I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office,
where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War
battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp
stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.
Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about,
first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in
a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.
"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.
I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and
appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of
myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying
my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure
of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly,
the while.
I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that
I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college
with....
"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded,
"I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval
buildings .
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