At table he talked but little.
Though devotedly fond of his eldest daughter, she was a puzzle and a stranger to him.

His interests and hers were absolutely dissimilar.
The children he seldom spoke to but to reprove; while Howard, the son, the ten-year-old and terrible infant of the household, he always referred to as "that boy." He was an abstracted, self-centred old man, with but two hobbies--homoeopathy and the mechanism of clocks.

But he had a strange way of talking to himself in a low voice, keeping up a running, half-whispered comment upon his own doings and actions; as, for instance, upon this occasion: "Nine o'clock--the clock's a little fast.
I think I'll wind my watch.

No, I've forgotten my watch.

Watermelon this morning, eh?
Where's a knife?
I'll have a little salt.
Victorine's forgot the spoons--ha, here's a spoon! No, it's a knife I want." After he had finished his watermelon, and while Victorine was pouring his coffee, the two children came in, scrambling to their places, and drumming on the table with their knife-handles.
The son and heir, Howard, was very much a boy.