“Don’t be in too great a hurry,” said Dick. “As you are here, we may as well have it out. We don’t often meet. Now, Max, my most affectionate brother, have the goodness to say that again, and let your wife’s sons hear what sort of a man you are.”
“No,” said Max, “I leave now. I shall take my own steps about it.”
“You will?” said Dick, looking startled.
“I shall, sir—I shall. I don’t consider you are fit to be trusted. There are such cases as inquiries in lunacy.”
“Bah!” said Dick, who looked startled all the same. “Well, if you don’t say what you said to me, here out loud before them all, I shall say it myself.”
“Then I will say it!” cried Max desperately. “What I said was this: As your uncle has hit upon some scheme for making a fortune, I have a right, as his own brother—”
“Very own, indeed,” said Dick quietly.
“To share with him in the secret.”
“And what I say to it is,” cried Dick—“and you can all hear me—that what I invented with my own brains is my own property, and I won’t be bullied out of it by all the brothers in Christendom.”
“Then I shall follow out my own course.”