"Of course you can't," he said, assuringly. "I never know what my lawyers are doing. If I did, I'd fire them and do it myself. And they realize it. A lawyer can order a fried egg, cooked on one side only, and make it sound like a royal proclamation announcing a total change of the currency system. They're like doctors and clairvoyants. Their graft lies in being mysterious. Why does a doctor call pink eye muco puerpural conjunctivitis? Because pink eye is not worth more than a dollar at the outside; but when he hands you muco puerpural conjunctivitis, he can get twenty-five at least before you wake up and say, 'Where am I?'"
His humor, perhaps, was forced; possibly there was nothing funny in what he said; but they laughed. There was always a tension at "Grey Rocks," now—always a strain. It needed little to relieve it; it needed that little badly. Blake gave to that little all that he could.
Even the child felt the tension, and the strain of it. She could not have told what it was; but she missed something beside her daddy, infinite was her longing for him, and her loneliness without him.
At times she used to beg the dignified Roberts to play buck-jump, and tag, with her, as "daddy used to do." And this she did while Blake and her mother and her Aunt Elinor were in the library, going over the troublesome papers with their imposing seals and undecipherable writing.
"I've been looking for you everyw'ere, Miss Muriel," the butler announced, impressively. Everything that Roberts did was impressive.
"Were you, Woberts?" she queried. "You didn't want to play hide-and-go seek, did you, Woberts? Because if you did, I'd like to heaps and heaps."
He opened his lips in protest; but she interrupted:
"I'll be it, Woberts, and you can run and hide. Oh! Will you?"
What could he say? It hurt his dignity—it was a distinct prostitution of pride—and yet, what could he say? What could he do? For he, too, loved, pitied, and was sorry.
Thus it was that, returning from the library, Kathryn, Elinor and Blake came upon a red-faced and puffing butler engaged in giving a most realistic imitation of a bear, while a delighted little girl, clapping tiny hands in glee, adjured him to growl as bears growl, not as cows growl.