I give up job. Dirty work. Money—bad money. I take no more—or I be damned! He better man—than you was; you bad and evil, for fun—he grow big and white. No work for bad man—friend now to good mens.
Pine.
"The devil!" muttered Ledyard; but oddly enough the letter raised, rather than lowered, his mental temperature. Those ill-looking epistles of Pine's had nauseated him lately. He had begun to experience the sensation of over-indulgence. Some one had told him, a time back, of Boswell's leaving the city, and he had been glad of the suspicion that arose in him when he heard it.
Later in the day the forces Priscilla had set in motion touched and drew him into the maelstrom.
"Ledyard"—this over the telephone—"my daughter has just informed me that she is about to break her engagement. May I see you at—three?"
"Yes. Here, or at your office?"
"I will come to you."
They had it out, man to man, and with all the time-honoured and hoary arguments.
"My girl's a fool!" Moffatt panted, red-faced and eloquent. "Not to mention what this really means to all of us, there is the girl's own happiness at stake. What are we to tell the world? You cannot go about and—explain! Good Lord! Ledyard, Huntter stands so high in public esteem that to start such a story as this about him would be to ruin my own reputation."
"No. The thing's got to die," Ledyard mused. "Die at its birth."