Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him—what?"
"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to pauperize people"—he said "pauper-wize people"—"any more than any one else."
"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a doctor to pauperize poor Fay."
"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."
Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal. "Claude and I have been talking him over—"
"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.
"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.
Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know anything about them. If you call that talking him over—well, you're welcome to your own use of terms."
The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me."
"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease."