“I suppose you saw that girl you are in love with?” said Barnard after a pause.
“Yes; two of them. Each of the syrens has got a lien upon my heart, and I really can’t say which of them holds the preference shares.’”
“Is there money?”
“Not what a great Croesus like yourself would call money, but still enough for a grand ‘operation’ at Hom-burg, or a sheep-farming exploit in Queensland.”
“You’re more ‘up’ to the first than the last”
“All wrong! Games of chance are to fellows like you, who must accept Fortune as they find her. Men of my stamp mould destiny.”
“Well, I don’t know. So long as I have known you, you’ve never been out of one scrape without being half way into another.”
“And yet there are fellows who pay dearer for their successes than ever I have done for my failures.”
“How so? What do they do?”
“They marry! Ay, Bob, they marry rich wives, but without any power to touch the money, just as a child gets a sovereign at Christmas under the condition he is never to change it.”