Tom would shake his head exasperatingly.
“Why don't you get after Ralph?” I demanded. “He doesn't antagonize Tallant, either.”
“Ralph's hopeless,” said Tom. “He was born a pirate, you weren't, Hughie. We think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?”
I refused to accept the remark as flattering.
Another object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this time had emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into a manipulator of blocks and corners.
“I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical bill of health of every client,” I said. “I won't stand up for all of Tallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take his cases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog a bad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because he has worked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you fellows don't believe in democracy,—in giving every man a chance to show what's in him.”
“Democracy is good!” exclaimed Perry. “If the kind of thing we're coming to is democracy, God save the state!”...
On the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton, sometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood friends who seemed to be able to “deal with conditions as he found them.” Indeed, he gave one the impression that, if he had had the making of them, he would not have changed them.
“What the deuce do you expect?” I once heard him inquire with good-natured contempt. “Business isn't charity, it's war.
“There are certain things,” maintained Perry, stoutly, “that gentlemen won't do.”