“I haven’t had a chance before to see you alone. It wouldn’t do to talk over at the store—your father’s in and out all the while, more out than in, by the way—and Tracy’s been here every day since you joined him.”
“He’s out of town to-day,” remarked Horace.
“So I heard. That’s why I came over. Do you know that your father has overdrawn his income account by nearly eleven thousand dollars, and that the wrong side of his book hasn’t got room for more than another year or so of that sort of thing? In fact, it wouldn’t last that long if I wanted to be sharp with him.”
The words were spoken very calmly, but they took the color as by a flash from Horace’s face. He swung his chair round, and, looking Tenney in the eyes, seemed spell-bound by what he saw there. The gaze was sustained between the two men until it grew to be like the experiment of two school-children who try to stare each other down, and under its strain the young lawyer felt himself putting forth more and more exertion to hold his own.
“I thought I would tell you,” added the hardware merchant, settling himself back in the chair and crossing his thin legs, and seemingly finding it no effort to continue looking his companion out of countenance. “Yes, I thought you ought to know. I suppose he hasn’t said anything to you about it.”
“Not a word,” answered Horace, shifting his glance to the desk before him, and striving with all his might to get his wits under control.
“That’s like him. The last thing he ever wants to talk about is business, least of all his own. They tell a story about a man who used to say, ‘Thank God, that’s settled!’ whenever he got a note renewed. He must have been a relation of the General’s.”
“It’s Sheridan that that’s ascribed to,” said Horace, for the sake of saying something.
“What, ‘Little Phil’? I thought he had more sense.”
There was something in this display of ignorance which gave Horace the courage to face his visitor once more. He turned resolutely toward Tenney.