"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage."
She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't cleared up?"
"I'm afraid—I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly understand."
"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," the girl returned.
"But a lawyer—indeed you ought to see a lawyer!—could explain how such a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case against your father, but against you."
"Against us? What do they say we have done?"
Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take everything here that belonged to your father—everything on the place, to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your rights in the case."
"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything to us!"
"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his debts."
"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one."