" "Ah, then,
it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged the man
who was then young, and who was now old, looking into
the somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait.
He had inherited as little of the fierceness as of the nose,
and there was nothing predatory in his son either,
though the aquiline beak had come down to him in such force.
Bromfield Corey liked his son Tom for the gentleness which
tempered his energy.
"Well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his
father's portrait. "I will travel." "Travel? How long?"
the keen eyes demanded. "Oh, indefinitely. I won't
be hard with you, father." He could see the eyes soften,
and the smile of yielding come over his father's face;
the merchant could not resist a son who was so much
like his dead mother. There was some vague understanding
between them that Bromfield Corey was to come back
and go into business after a time, but he never did so.
He travelled about over Europe, and travelled handsomely,
frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself
presented at several courts, at a period when it
was a distinction to do so. He had always sketched,
and with his father's leave he fixed himself at Rome,
where he remained studying art and rounding the being
inherited from his Yankee progenitors, till there
was very little left of the ancestral angularities.
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