“Then stop, here and now. You've wasted two years' time, but you can't get it back by throwing more after it. I shouldn't be your friend, I shouldn't be an honest man, if I let you go on with me, after this. A bad lawyer is such a very bad thing. This isn't altogether a surprise to me, but it will be a blow to your father,” he added, with a questioning look at Halleck, after a moment.
“It might have been, if I hadn't taken the precaution to deaden the place by a heavier blow first.”
“Ah! you've spoken to him already?”
“Yes, I've had it out in a sneaking, hypothetical way. But I could see that, so far as the law was concerned it was enough; it served. Not that he's consented to the other thing; there's where I shall need your help, Atherton. I'll tell you what my plan is.” He stated it bluntly at first; and then went over the ground and explained it fully, as he had done at home. Atherton listened without permitting any sign of surprise to escape him; but he listened with increasing gravity, as if he heard something not expressed in Halleck's slow, somewhat nasal monotone, and at the end he said, “I approve of any plan that will take you away for a while. Yes, I'll speak to your father about it.”
“If you think you need any conviction, I could use arguments to bring it about in you,” said Halleck, in recognition of his friend's ready concurrence.
“No, I don't need any arguments to convince me, I believe,” returned Atherton.
“Then I wish you'd say something to bring me round! Unless argument is used by somebody, the plan always produces a cold chill in me.” Halleck smiled, but Atherton kept a sober face. “I wish my Spanish American was here! What makes you think it's a good plan? Why should I disappoint my father's hopes again, and wring my mother's heart by proposing to leave them for any such uncertain good as this scheme promises?” He still challenged his friend with a jesting air, but a deeper and stronger feeling of some sort trembled in his voice.
Atherton would not reply to his emotion; he answered, with obvious evasion: “It's a good cause; in some sort—the best sort—it's a missionary work.”
“That's what my mother said to me.”
“And the change will be good for your health.”