"You are a pretty damned fool, Ken, to talk like that," Hubert put in softly.
"Oh, well! it makes me so wild," Turner protested. "You know the whole amount's under fifteen hundred, and what's that to a man worth over half a million? The pater told me this evening that the old chap's worth all that. Quite likely a heap more."
Hubert solemnly closed his left eye, and continued to stare at the billiard table with the other. "If you come to live down here, he'll put you in the will," he remarked.
Turner snorted impatiently. "It isn't good enough," he said crossly. "Besides, it's a rotten game waiting for dead men's shoes."
"Specially if you can't damned well help yourself," Hubert agreed, without the least sign of being offended.
Arthur's general perplexity was not enlightened by this conversation, although he had now no further doubts as to the reason for Kenyon Turner's visit. There still remained that old suggestion of something taken for granted, something that was hidden from Arthur himself. The two men had apparently spoken quite frankly before him, and Turner, at least, had verged upon the indiscreet until Hubert had pulled him up. But behind all their talk lay the hint of an assumption that violated Arthur's feeling for common sense. This particular refusal of money could be accounted for. Old Mr Kenyon, if he had been a successful gambler himself, might feel a contempt for the failure, or he might, very reasonably, dislike young Turner. But why should he, in either case, want him to come and live at Hartling? Unless that alternative was being held over him as a kind of threat?
Nor did the temporary solution of the immediate problem elucidate the general situation. Kenyon Turner had his interview with his grandfather on Sunday morning, and left for town half an hour later in the Vauxhall.
Arthur, burning with curiosity, made an opportunity to get Hubert alone after lunch.
"Well, what happened this morning?" he asked.
"Given him a month," Hubert replied.