“I wish you would sit down a minute or two,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
Horace took a chair, and turned the cigar restlessly around in his teeth. He was conscious that his nerves were not quite what they should be.
“It seems to me,” pursued Reuben—“I’m speaking as an older lawyer than you, and an older man—it seems to me that to put a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage on the Minster property is a pretty big undertaking for a young man to go into on his own hook, without consulting anybody. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t think I wish to meddle. Only it seems to me, if I had been in your place, I should have moved very cautiously and taken advice.
“I did take advice,” said Horace. The discovery that Reuben knew of this mortgage filled him with uneasiness.
“Of whom? Schuyler Tenney?” asked Reuben, speaking calmly enough, but watching with all his eyes.
The chance shot went straight to the mark. Horace visibly flushed, and then turned pale.
“I decline to be catechised in this way,” he said, nervously shifting his position on the chair, and then suddenly rising. “Gedney is a damned, meddlesome, drunken old fool,” he added, with irrelevant vehemence.
“Yes, I’m afraid ‘Cal’ does drink too much,” answered Reuben, with perfect amiability of tone. He evinced no desire to continue the conversation, and Horace, after standing for an uncertain moment or two in the doorway, went out and put on his overcoat. Then he came back again.
“Am I to take it that you object to my continuing to act as attorney for these ladies?” he asked from the threshold of the outer room, his voice shaking a little in spite of itself.
“I don’t think I have said that,” replied Reuben.