“More fool you! What did she want?”
He hesitated a moment and then replied, “She thought, perhaps, I could do something to quiet the men who are to meet to-night to take steps with regard to her father.”
For a moment the judge could not speak. His anger was so great that it brought on a fit of coughing, and the big gulp of claret he had taken was thrown out upon the napkin tucked under his chin.
“Strike me on the back, can’t you! and not sit staring at me while I choke to death,” he gasped.
Herbert struck him on the back with so good effect that the paroxysm was soon passed, and after two or three sneezes, he began:
“Great Peter! Why did you hit me so hard. You nearly broke my spine. Mad, I s’pose, because I asked you about the Grey girl—a pretty kind of modest piece, too, I must say, to think you’d appear as her advocate. I like that! Yes, I do! Did you tell her you’d go? If you did and do go, I’ve told you what’s what, and I mean it, too. Asked you to plead for that wretch, who deserves State’s prison—if ever a feller did!”
“So do a great many who are not there,” Herbert answered, adding, “I did not tell her I’d go. It would do no good, but it would be different with you. They would listen to you if you advised them not to arrest Mr. Grey. They would have to take him on a stretcher, he is so ill. I wish you’d go, I know Fred Lansing would if he were here.”
Herbert was growing courageous as he talked, with a thought of Louie’s face as it had looked at him an hour before. Something had brought Fred Lansing to his mind with a wish that he were there. Fred would not hesitate to brave the whole town, and, knowing the esteem in which he was held by his father, Herbert had used his name as an argument. But Fred was promptly consigned to perdition, and Herbert was sent after him in very emphatic language, and the interview was closed by Herbert’s leaving the table. He had intended going to Worcester that afternoon to attend a concert in the evening, but he gave that up and went instead into the town, dropping into three or four places of business, ostensibly to look at something, or make some little purchase, but really to hear if anything was said of the expected investigation. Only once was allusion made to it or the failure, and then a dry-goods merchant asked if he had heard there was to be a meeting of Mr. Grey’s creditors that night?
“Yes,” he replied, “and I am sorry, and hope they will decide not to molest him. It can do no good, and I suppose you know he is very ill. They would never attempt to touch him in his present state. Give him time if he lives, and I dare say he will try to pay every thing he owes.”
This was quite a speech for Herbert in Mr. Grey’s behalf, and after he had made it he felt that he had done a good thing for Louie, especially as the merchant to whom he was talking and who was not a heavy loser by the failure, replied, “That’s so. Grey is a good sort, and I don’t s’pose he has done worse than hundreds of bankers are doing all the time. He had bad luck and was caught, that’s all the difference. I had only fifty in the bank, and I’d rather lose that than see him dragged to prison as a few hot-heads seem to want to do; but I guess they won’t.”