Arthur dropped back into his chair.
"Honestly, Artie, honestly," Dory went on, with the friendliest earnestness, "isn't there something wrong about anything that causes the man you are by nature to think and feel and talk that way, when his father is not a week dead?"
Arthur forced a sneer, but without looking at Dory.
"Do you remember the day of the funeral?" Dory went on. "It had been announced in the papers that the burial would be private. As we drove out of the front gates there, I looked round—you remember it was raining. There were uncovered farm wagons blocking the streets up and down. There were thousands of people standing in the rain with bared heads. And I saw tears thick as the rain drops streaming down faces of those who had known your father as boy and man, who had learned to know he was all that a human being should be."
Arthur turned away to hide his features from Dory.
"That was your father, Artie. What if he could have heard you a few minutes ago?"
"I don't need to have anyone praise my father to me," said Arthur, trying to mask his feelings behind anger. "And what you say is no reason why I should let mother and Del and myself be cheated out of what he wanted us to have."
Dory left it to Arthur's better self to discuss that point with him. "I know you'll do what is right," said he sincerely. "You are more like your father than you suspect as yet, Artie. I should have said nothing to you if you hadn't forced your confidence on me. What I've said is only what you'd say to me, were I in your place and you in mine—what you'll think yourself a month from now. What lawyer advised you to undertake the contest?"
"Dawson of Mitchell, Dawson, Vance & Bischoffsheimer. As good lawyers as there are in the country."
"I ought to tell you," said Dory, after brief hesitation, "that Judge Torrey calls them a quartette of unscrupulous scoundrels—says they're regarded as successful only because success has sunk to mean supremacy in cheating and double-dealing. Would you mind telling me what terms they gave you—about fee and expenses?"