"A good many people have lived in Lonsdale Road and haven't died. Your doctor is an old woman, telling fairy-tales. But even if he were right, I disclaim responsibility. I give the best value I can for the money; if people won't pay for things, they can't have them. _I_ didn't set the standards of business. They existed before me, and they'll exist after me. If I hadn't built those houses, some one else would have built them, and probably worse." "But the dishonesty of it!" cried Arthur. "Dishonest? Well, I'll admit that too, if you like. But whose dishonesty? Find me a business in London that isn't dishonest. It's London itself that is dishonest. It insists on having what it hasn't paid for, and won't pay for. It prefers shoddy because it's cheap. It has no right to complain of what it gets." Arthur listened in appalled silence; before this brutally lucid exposition of what business meant, it seemed as though all his fine ideals of right and justice were so many burst bubbles. For a long moment it was as though he saw the world streaming past him, like a dark torrent thronged with dead faces, upon whose agonised pale lips was the eternal accusation of things as they are. "Father, it can't be right!" he cried. "There's a power of things isn't right in this world, as you'll find out some day. And talking won't put 'em right, either. But that brings me to what I wanted to say. It's about the thing you omitted to mention when you told me your story." "What was that, father?" "I'll tell you. You can show me what's wrong in my business, and now I'm going to show you something that's wrong in your conduct. If I told you you'd behaved like a sulky young whelp, you'd say I was unjust, wouldn't you? Well, that's just what you've done." "Father----" "Don't interrupt. You've had your say, and I mean now to have mine, and be done with it. If you'd come to me when this thing began to trouble you, I'd have talked it over with you frankly. But what did you do? You kept away from me. You did worse. You went about repeating what Dr. Leet said. You hadn't even the common decency to wait until you'd seen me. You hadn't even the gratitude to recollect that I'd done the best I could for you, and was planning to do more. You behaved just like a bad-hearted little boy who goes about letting folks think that his father is his enemy. That's pretty behaviour in a son, isn't it? But it seems that's the kind of son I've got. And for that I don't forgive you. You've made it clear that you and I can't draw together." "I never meant anything of the kind." "Never meant! What kind of excuse is that? It's what every slack-baked youth in the office says when he's played the fool. And when a youth can find nothing better to say than that, I fire him. And I'm going to fire you." "I am entirely in your hands, father. I can see that I was wrong in not coming to you at once. What more can I say?"