"In his what?" fairly bellowed Farrington. "Is the woman crazy? You don't mean to tell me, madam, that you have any such wild idea in your head as sending him to college?"
"I certainly have."
"Then you'll never make it--you'll waste your dollars, and bring him up a pampered ingrate, and he's a sneak if he allows his old mother to dig and slave her fingers off for his worthless pleasure!"
A faint flush crossed the widow's face. Ralph burst the bounds. He sprang forward, and confronted the astonished magnate so abruptly that in the confusion of the moment, Farrington dropped his cane.
"Mr. Farrington," said Ralph, striving hard to keep control of himself, "my mother is not old, but I am--older than I was an hour ago, I can tell you! old enough to understand what I never knew before, and----"
"Hello!" sniffed Farrington, "what's this your business?"
"I just overheard you say it was essentially my business," answered Ralph. "I begin to think so myself. At all events, I'm going to take a hand in my mother's affairs hereafter. If I have hitherto been blind to the real facts, it was because I had the best mother in the world, and never realized the big sacrifice she was making for me."
"Bah!"
"Mr. Farrington," continued Ralph, seeming to grow two inches taller under the influence of some new, elevating idea suddenly finding lodgment in his mind, "as a person fully awakened to his own general worthlessness and idle, good-for-nothing character, and in duty bound to pay the honest debts of the family--to quote your own words--what is your business here?"
"My business!" gasped Farrington, "you, you--none of your business! Mrs. Fairbanks," he shouted, waving his cane and almost exploding with rage, "I've said my say, and I shan't stay here to be insulted by a pert chit of a boy. You'd better think it over! I'll give you five hundred dollars to surrender the house and get out of Stanley Junction. Decline that, and fail to pay me the interest due to-day, and I'll close down on you--I'll sell you out!"