‘Anyhow, you thought fit to disobey me—oh, don’t wriggle so!—and you have been very properly paid out for it. You are too young to gamble. My poor boy! every shopkeeper in Rhodopé is laughing at you this moment, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. For me, I have never been so nearly hysterical; I was helpless with laughter. I told you you were too young to gamble, and you would not take my word for it. You have been very naughty and disobedient, and you made a thorough exhibition of yourself—within three days to fight in the streets and to dress up as Polly to go to the Casino. Oh, that hat! What a creation!’ and she began to laugh again. ‘I thought you were one of the bourgeois.’
Leonard stepped out of the skirt, and pulled down his trousers, which he had rolled up to the knees over his sturdy calves, and regarded his mother critically.
‘I say, mother, you know you must have begun pretty young, too,’ he said. ‘The earliest thing I can remember is being told you were the finest gambler in Europe. I watched you playing to-night. You played very quietly, and by your face a man could not tell whether you had won or lost. Is that the chic way to gamble?’
‘That is the only way to gamble,’ said she, forgetting for a moment the moral lesson. ‘I have seen men and women tremble so that they could scarcely pick up their winnings. Whatever you do, always keep quiet at the tables. There is no such test of decent breeding.’
‘You must teach me,’ said Leonard insidiously. ‘We might play for—for counters at first, quietly, at home.’
‘That would be very amusing,’ remarked his mother, ‘and roulette for two would certainly be a novelty; but I don’t want you to grow up a gambler, Leonard.’
‘Yet to-night I found it very entertaining; and did not you grow up a gambler?’ said he. ‘Also, it seemed to me easy, which is an advantage.’
‘Easy! There is no such word. There is good luck and bad luck; that is all the vocabulary.’
‘When did you first begin playing?’ asked he.
‘When I was too young.’