I've been cheated out of it.

I'll get it.

Besides--" His mind suddenly cleared of the shadow of shame--"I owe it to mother and Del to make the fight.

They've been cheated, too.
Because they're too soft-hearted and too reverent of father's memory, is that any reason, any excuse, for my shirking my duty by them?
If father were here to speak, I know he'd approve." Before him rose the frightful look in his father's eyes in the earlier stage of that second and last illness.

"_That's_ what the look meant!" he cried, now completely justified.