“Money talks,” returned Ogden sententiously. “You really want to put up money on this fool idea?” “It will only be a fool idea if you’re a fool.” “Well, probably I am.” The boy’s broad shoulders relapsed against the back of his chair. His companion frowned and sat forward more tensely in his own. “You are Miss Frink’s legitimate heir,” he said, in a low voice, “but, believe me, there is no hope of her dying intestate. Are you going to continue tamely taking one cheap job after another, being a disgrace to the finest sister a boy ever had, listening to the disgruntled talk of a lot of grouchy fellows until you become as spineless as they are”— “Say, now,” Hugh sat up, crimsoning. “Keep still. Are you going on living in a cloud of cheap tobacco smoke, in a hall bedroom on a back street, with no ambition for anything better—” “Look here—” “No one stands still,” declared John Ogden[23] curtly. “You’re going down if you’re not going up. You, with your splendid physique, allowing your backbone to slump like boiled macaroni. Aren’t you man enough to take a brace and go to Farrandale and shove that pussy-footing secretary of your aunt’s out of the place that should be yours?” [23] Hugh regarded the suddenly fiery speaker with open lips. “He expects to be her heir; everybody knows he does. He has Miss Frink under his influence so that the whole household are afraid of him. There she lives in this great house, with her servants and this secretary—Grimshaw, his name is. He has wormed himself into her confidence until she scarcely makes a move without him, though she doesn’t realize it herself. Will you stay here and let him have it all his own way?” The speaker scowled into the dark eyes with the deep, pensive corners that were giving him their full attention. “As soon as you told me you were Miss Frink’s nephew, I saw what you could do; and for the very same reason that you felt you could succeed in the movies. Isn’t it Shakespeare who said: ‘She is a woman, and therefore to be won’?
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