"Of course I was a fool. My father has the whip-hand of me, because he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the pricks to speak as I did. And then too there isn't a fellow in London has a higher respect for his father than I have, nor yet a warmer affection. But it is hard to be driven in that way. Gambler is a nasty word."
"Yes, it is; very nasty. But I suppose a man does gamble when he loses so much money that he has to ask his father to pay it for him."
"If he does so often, he gambles. I never asked him for money to pay what I had lost before in my life."
"I wonder you told him."
"I never lie to him, and he ought to know that. But he is just the man to be harder to his own son than to anybody else in the world. What does he want me to do now?"
"I don't know that he wants you to do anything," said Lopez.
"Did he send you to me?"
"Well;—no; I can't say that he did. I told him I should see you as a matter of course, and he said something rough,—about your being an ass."
"I dare say he did."
"But if you ask me," said Lopez, "I think he would take it kindly of you if you were to go and see him. Come and dine to-day, just as if nothing had happened."