"Dear God!… every hour since!"
"The Spurlock conscience. That is why Wall Street broke your father; he was honest."
"Ah, my father! The way you treated him…!"
"Good money after bad. You haven't heard my side if it, Hoddy. To shore up a business that never had any foundation, he wanted me to lend him a hundred thousand; and for his sake as well as for mine I had to refuse. He wasn't satisfied with an assured income from the paper-mills your grandfather left us. He wanted to become a millionaire. So I had to buy out his interest, and it pinched me dreadfully to do it. In the end he broke his own heart along with your mother's. I even offered him back the half interest he had sold to me. You sent back my Christmas checks."
"I had to. I couldn't accept anything from you."
"You might have added 'then'," said Miss Spurlock, drily.
"I'm an ungrateful dog!"
"You will be if you don't instantly kiss me the way you used to.
But your face! What happened here just before I came?"
"Perhaps God wasn't quite sure that I could hold what I had, and wanted to try me out."
"And you whipped the beast? I passed him."