“What for?”
“How should I know, sir? To pay old debts, perhaps. Ah, it’s a sorry business.”
“But surely we can do something.”
“Bah!”
“Now, don’t be angry, Hampton. If it was a leg or a wing diseased, I should know what to do, but in these legal matters I am a perfect child.”
“You are, Lawrence, you are.”
“Well,” said the doctor tartly, “knowing that, I came to you, as a legal light, to give me your opinion. Do you mean to tell me that we, as old Harrington’s executors, cannot interfere to stop this man from wasting his substance and wrecking the life of that poor girl?”
“Yes, sir, I do, plump and plain. Our duties were limited to seeing that, after all bequests were paid, this gentlemanly young fellow from the Far West had all the money his old lunatic of a grandfather left him.”
“But—”
“There, butt away till you break your skull, if you like, against the stone wall of the law. I, as a lawyer, can do nothing, but perhaps you can—as a doctor.”