This view appeared to strike Eleanor and Mollie favourably; something in the half-a-loaf policy appeals with a subtle power to the feminine mind. But Steven's old face reddened; he darted a vengeful glance at this Laodicean councillor.
"Compromise—nothing!" he snarled. "I'll see him da—I'll see him farther before I'll compromise!"
"All right—all right, I was just saying that's one way of settling these things," said Archie hastily. "Of course you know what you want, Mr. Gwynne. Trouble is, you go into court with a case, and you never know how long it will take to wind it up—maybe two or three years—that's perfectly irrespective of the rights of the case. Whereas, if you accept some kind of settlement, you—well, in general, you come out ahead of the game," said Archie, falling back on the vernacular.
Oh, wise young judge! The two Misses Gwynne listened to Archie's exposition with respectful awe. I have heard him say with a laugh that at no time in his subsequent career—which has been one of considerable distinction—has he ever felt himself to be exerting so much influence, no, not in his most sustained and vigorous flights of oratory. "I might have been the Almighty, instead of a smart-Alecky boy, by the way those two poor old women were impressed—it was funny—funny and pitiful," he says, and shakes his grizzling head.
"It's—it's very awful to have someone in debt to you, Mr. Lewis," Miss Mollie took courage to say falteringly.
"Not so bad as being in debt to somebody yourself, though," said Archie genially. This well-intended levity was a serious mistake; they shrank—they withered before the dreadful suggestion.
"We—we aren't that, Mr. Lewis," cried both old maids in scared chorus. "It's not we that are in debt—it's somebody that owes us——"
"That owes the GWYNNE ESTATE," said Steven ponderously. He had forgot all about his supposititious case, and Archie, who, as he himself might have said, was not born yesterday, had already made a shrewd guess as to the identity of the debtor.
"A debt's a bad business, anyway you fix it," he said easily. "Reminds me of that story father tells of himself when he was a boy borrowing money of their old coloured man to go to the circus with. 'Chile,' says old Mose, 'you's got to 'member this; er debt that ain't paid stahts er roorback! You owe me, an' I owe Pete, an' Pete he owes that wall-eyed niggah oveh at the liv'ry-stable, an' lakly Mistah Walleye, he owes somebody else, an' 'twell one of us stahts the payin', nobuddy cyahn't pay—an' thar's your roorback!'" Archie laughed. He laughed alone, for this sprightly tale, although he had recited it in a careful imitation of Judge Lewis' best manner, apparently failed to amuse anybody but himself. Perhaps it went too near the truth to be wholly agreeable. "I never realised until that moment," he used to say with a certain naïveté, "what an awful job poor Gwynne Peters had for years with those people. I'll bet nobody knows or ever will know what he put up with!"
His new sympathy put a greater warmth into his greeting when Gwynne at last came in, a few minutes later. Archie, as he explained his errand, noted inwardly that his friend's face was drawn and tired; nor did he wonder much at the grim look Gwynne cast around the waiting family-circle.