"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it all the same."
Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end.
Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes burn on Matt's kindly face.
"Well, sir," he said, "what do you think can be done for two women, brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?"
"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked.
"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company—"
"But I thought—I thought they might have something besides—something—"
"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?"
"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with it—or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it."
"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either."