“Good God! Haven’t I been good to him?” said Tenney, with real indignation. “Couldn’t I have frozen him out eighteen months ago instead of taking up his overdrafts at only ten per cent, charge so as to keep him along? There isn’t one man in a hundred who would have done for him what I have.”
“I am glad to hear it,” replied the young man.
“If the proportion was much larger, I am afraid this would be a very unhappy world to live in.”
Mr. Tenney eyed the lawyer doubtfully. He had not clearly grasped the meaning of this remark, but instinct told him that it was hostile.
“All right! You may take it that way, if you like.” He rose as he spoke and began buttoning his overcoat. “Only let me say this: when the smash comes, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. If you won’t listen to me, that’s your lookout.”
“But I haven’t done anything but listen to you for the last two hours,” said Horace, who longed to tell his visitor to go to the devil, and yet was betrayed into signs of anxiety at the prospect of his departure. “If you’ll remember, you haven’t told me anything that I asked for. Heaven knows, I should be only too glad to listen, if you’ve got anything to say.”
Mr. Tenney made a smiling movement with his thin lips and sat down again.
“I thought you would change your tune,” he said, calmly. Horace offered a gesture of dissent, to which the hardware merchant paid no attention. He had measured his man, and decided upon a system of treatment. “What I really wanted,” he continued, “was to look you over and hear you talk, and kind of walk around you and size you up, so to speak. You see I’ve only known you as a youngster—better at spending money than at making it. Now that you’ve started as a lawyer, I thought I’d take stock of you again, don’t you see; and the best way to sound you all around was to talk about your father’s affairs.”
Horace was conscious of a temptation to be angry at this cool statement, but he did not yield to it. “Then it isn’t true—what you have told me?” he asked.
“Well, yes, it is, mostly,” answered Mr. Tenney, again contemplating his joined finger-tips. “But it isn’t of so much importance compared with some other things. There’s bigger game afoot than partnerships in hardware stores.”