“Indifferently, madam,” said I. “But I am green at all gambling devices.”
“You shall learn,” she encouraged lightly. “In Benton as in Rome, you know. There is no disgrace attached to laying down a dollar here and there—we all do it. That is part of our amusement, in Benton.” She halted. “You are game, sir? What is life but a series of chances? Are you disposed to win a little and flout the danger of losing?”
“I am in Benton to win,” I valiantly asserted. 114 “And if under your direction, so much the quicker. What first, then? The three-card monte?”
“It is the simplest. Faro would be beyond you yet. Rondo coolo is boisterous and confusing—and as for poker, that is a long session of nerves, while chuck-a-luck, though all in the open, is for children and fools. You might throw the dice a thousand times and never cast a lucky combination. Roulette is as bad. The percentage in favor of the bank in a square game is forty per cent. better than stealing. I’ll initiate you on monte. Are your eyes quick?”
“For some things,” I replied meaningly.
She conducted me to the nearest monte game, where the “spieler”—a smooth-faced lad of not more than nineteen—sat behind his three-legged little table, green covered, and idly shifting the cards about maintained a rather bored flow of conversational incitement to bets.
As happened, he was illy patronized at the moment. There were not more than three or four onlookers, none risking but all waiting apparently upon one another.
At our arrival the youth glanced up with the most innocent pair of long-lashed brown eyes that I ever had seen. A handsome boy he was.
“Hello, Bob.”
He smiled, with white teeth.