"What do you think Haye has done?" — he broke out, like a horse that is champing the bit.
"What?" said Winthrop.
"He has sued me."
"Sued you!" exclaimed Winthrop, while even Winnie forgot her tears and started up. Rufus walked.
"What do you mean, Will?"
"I mean he has sued me!" — said Rufus stopping short and facing them with eyes that for the moment had established a natural pyrotechny of their own.
"How, and what for?"
"How? — by the usual means! What for? — I will tell you!"
Which he sat down to do; Winthrop and Winnie both his most earnest auditors.
"You know it was Haye's own proposition, urged by himself, that I should go into business with him. Nobody asked him — it was his own doing; it was his declared purpose and wish, unsolicited by me or my father or by anybody, to set me forward in his own line and put me in the way of making my fortune! — as he said."