Lanny came to the house that evening; he asked to see David in the study.
“Of course you saw the Declarator, Mr. Dean,” he said when they were alone. “I don't know what to do about it. I saw father, and if he hadn't been my father I would have knocked him down with my fist. It's a dirty piece of business. I know what's the matter with him: he's sore because I'm going to marry somebody decent, when no decent person will have anything to do with him. Mother told him I'm engaged to Alice. I talked to him straight; you can believe that! I would have taken it out of his hide if I hadn't thought how it would look. You wouldn't want a son-in-law that was in jail for beating up his own father. What can I do about it, Mr. Dean?”
David said nothing could be done about it; he said he was glad Lanny had not attacked his father with physical violence, and he urged him to avoid words with his father.
“He has had a hard life; you and I do not know how hard. It has embittered him; he is not rightly responsible.”
“But why should he attack you, of all men?” Lanny cried. “Or if he don't like you what kind of a father is it that tries to spoil things for me—that's what he's trying to do. It's meanness.”
“He has had a hard life,” David repeated. “You don't think I ought to do anything? You can't suggest anything for me to do?”
“Avoid quarreling with him,” said David. There was no other advice to give; it was unfortunate that Alice should have chosen to love a man with such a father; there was nothing Lanny or any other person could do. Welsh was a town nuisance.
The next week the Declarator retracted, in the manner in which it always retracted when a retraction was necessary. The item in the “Briefs” was headed “An Apology!!!” and ran: “We apologize. The Spiritual Dead Beat has paid his debts. We wonder who lent him the money?” The banker-trustee, Burton, meeting David, spoke to him of this.
“I see our respected fellow townsman, Welsh, is touching you up, dominie,” he said. “It is a pity we can't run the fellow out of town. Worthless cur! He gave me his attention last year; I put an ad in his paper and he shut up. What do you suppose ever started him against you?”
“He is an embittered man; his hand is against the whole world.”