He turned away, and Sargent quickly stepped to his side, saying:
“I am still your friend, Dug, but I can’t afford to get into trouble and lose my engagement. You know I’ve got a mother——”
Dunton flung off the hand his friend had placed on his arm.
“The same old mother cry!” he sneered. “You pretend you send all your money to your mother, and that’s why you’re forever broke. That mother of yours is in a Tenderloin flat in New York, I’ll bet, and it’s ten to one she’s drinking fizz with another popper to-night. I’ve sized you up as a good, soft thing. You’ve had your leg pulled till it’s a wonder you can walk without crutches. Soft things always make me tired!”
He left the dressing room, with Sargent standing in the middle of the floor.
“All right!” muttered the latter; “all right, Dunton! I have been your friend, but I rather think this ends it. My conscience won’t trouble me if I quit you after this.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
A REMARKABLE STAGE DUEL.
Douglas Dunton was “sore.” He felt that, besides other unpleasant things that had happened, he had lost his friend and chum, and he blamed Frank Merriwell for it all.
And when he saw Merriwell carry his part through the second act quite as well as he had done in the first, only getting adrift twice, and then faking lines so that it was unnecessary to prompt him, Dunton actually was sick. His lips, on which there were no coloring, looked blue and cold, and his flesh was clammy to the touch.