"I wonder if he wouldn't let me have some money while he's feeling that way?"
"Who?" queried Bess. "Father?"
"What! you here still, Curiosity? Better take these things downstairs!"
George spoke with his "headache tone," as Clara called it, and Bess, without reply, gathered up the tray things and went out, while George continued to figure out in his hardly yet sober brain the possibility of his father letting him have more money with which to gamble.
In the very next room Mrs. Hardy kneeled in an agony of petition for that firstborn son, crying out of her heart, "O God, it is more than I can bear! To see him growing away from me so! Dear Lord, be Thou merciful to me. Bring him back again to the life he used to live! How proud I was of him! What a joy he was to me! And now, and now! O gracious Father, if Thou art truly compassionate, hear me! Has not this foul demon of drink done harm enough? And yet it still comes, and even into my home! Ah, I have been indifferent to the cries of other women, but now it strikes me! Spare me, great and powerful Almighty! My boy! my heart's hunger is for him! I would rather see him dead than see him as I saw him last night. Spare me, spare me, O God!" Thus the mother prayed, dry-eyed and almost despairing, while he for whom she prayed that heart-broken prayer calculated, with growing coldness of mind, the chances of getting more money from his father to use in drink and at the gaming table.
O appetite, and thou spirit of gambling, ye are twin demons with whom many a fair-browed young soul to-day is marching arm in arm down the dread pavement of hell's vestibule, lined with grinning skeletons of past victims! Yet men gravely discuss the probability of evil, and think there is no special danger in a little speculation now and then. Parents say, "Oh, my boy wouldn't do such a thing!" But how many know what their boy is really doing, and how many of the young men would dare reveal to their mothers or fathers the places where they have been, and the amusements they have tasted, and the things for which they have spent their money?
Mr. Hardy went at once to his neighbours, the Caxtons, who lived only a block away. He had not been on speaking terms with the family for some time, and he dreaded the interview with the sensitiveness of a very proud and stern-willed man. But two days had made a great change in him. He was a new man in Christ Jesus; and as he rang the bell he prayed for wisdom and humility.
James himself came to the door with his overcoat on and hat in hand, evidently just ready to go down town. He started back at seeing Mr. Hardy.
"Are you going down town? I will not come in then, but walk along with you," said Mr. Hardy quietly.
So James came out, and the two walked along together. There was an awkward pause for a minute, then Mr. Hardy said: