Laurence laughed inwardly. He understood.
"Why, I thought you were bringing it on all right," he said.
"So did I; but when I put it to her, she was dead off," said Holmes, disconsolately savage.
"Sure?"
"Cert."
"Well, give her another show. Some women—girls especially—like that sort of application twice over. They think it enhances their value in some inexplicable way," said Laurence, with a touch of characteristic satire. "I don't, but that's a matter of opinion. And, I don't want to hurt your feelings, Holmes, but is this one worth it?"
"I don't know," answered the other savagely, driving his heel into the ground. "It's that beast Barstow. What the deuce she can see in him, bangs me."
"Yes, unless it is that you hold a quantity of unsaleable scrip and he doesn't," rejoined Laurence, who had been secretly amused in watching the progress of pretty Mabel Falkner's latest preference. "But in any case I think you'd better not touch it, or you'll find yourself on the one horn or other of this dilemma; if she is coming the 'playing off' trick, why, that is despicable, and in fact not good enough; if she means business, why, you can't go begging to her for what she has given to the other Johnny without any begging at all. See?"
"Oh, yes, I see," was the rueful rejoinder. "By the Lord, Stanninghame, I used to think you a deuced snarling, cynical beggar at first, but now, 'pon my soul, I believe you're right."
"Do you? Well, then, you don't want to go away up-country and get bowled out with fever or struck by a nigger, and all that sort of thing, because one girl don't care a cent for you."