“It has come, has it?” The young man heard himself saying these words, but they sounded as if they had issued from other lips than his. He had schooled himself for a fortnight to realize that his father was actually insolvent, yet the shock seemed to find him all unprepared.
“Then you expected it? You knew about it?”
“Tenney told me last month that it must come, sooner or later.”
The General offered an invocation as to Mr. Tenney’s present existence and future state which, solemnly impressive though it was, may not be set down here.
“So I say, too, if you like,” answered Horace, beginning to pace the room. “But that will hardly help us just now. Tell me just what has happened.”
“Sit down, then: you make me nervous, tramping about like that. The villain simply asked me to step into the office for a minute, and then took out his note-book, cool as a cucumber. ‘I thought I’d call your attention to how things stand between us.’ he said, as if I’d been a country customer who was behindhand with his paper. Then the scoundrel calmly went on to say that my interest in the partnership was worth less than nothing; that I already owed him more than the interest would come to, if the business were sold out, and that he would like to know what I proposed to do about it. By Heaven! that’s what he said to me, and I sat there and listened to him.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him what I thought of him. He hasn’t heard so much straight, solid truth about himself before since he was weaned, I’ll bet!”
“But what good was that? He isn’t the sort who minds that kind of thing. What did you tell him you would do?”
“Break his infernal skull for him if he ever spoke to me again!”