"I will certainly occupy no more of your time than I can help," Ralph replied, "though I fear you are not in the humour to consider any proposal from me."
"I should think not, indeed. Why should I be? Do you wish me to tell you what I think of you?"
"I am not anxious on that score, though I am not aware that I have given you any reason for thinking ill of me."
"You are not, eh? When you cheated me out of the most valuable bit of property I possessed?"
"Did we not pay the price you asked?"
"But you knew there was a valuable tin lode in it."
"What of that? The property was in the market. We did not induce you to sell it. We heard by accident that you wanted to dispose of it. If there had been no lode we should have made no effort to get it."
"It was a mean, dishonest trick, all the same."
"I do not see it. By every moral right the farm was more mine than yours. I helped my father to reclaim it. You spent nothing on it, never raised your finger to bring it under cultivation. Moreover, it was common land at the start. In league with a dishonest Parliament, you filched it from the people, and then, by the operation of an iniquitous law, you filched it a second time from my father."
Sir John listened to this speech with blazing eyes and clenched hands.