“Wolfe,” said Jerningham, slowly, “you are one of those unfortunate chaps who are cruelly handicapped by perennial youth. It is doubtless a pleasing thing to feel at fifty as you did at twenty. Nevertheless, it is bad business. It is all very nice to shun responsibility, but it makes you careless; and you can't expect to saddle consequences on your guardian after you are twenty-one. A boy of forty can't be trusted to take care of his own property.”
“I can take care of mine,” laughed Frank, “without any trouble.” His property was about minus thirty thousand.
“Your property now—yes. But suppose you had a million or two left you—or even more? Do you know what would happen to those millions, and do you know what would happen to you?”
“I know—but I won't tell.”
“Will you let me tell you?” asked Jerningham, so earnestly that Frank almost stopped smiling.
“I'll hear you to the bitter end.”
“The millions would go from your pocket into the pockets of—well, you know whose pockets! And your life would go into the Big Beyond by the W. W. route.”
“I bite. What's W. W.?”
“Wine and woman. You would last perhaps five years. You would die a dipsomaniac at thirty or thereabout. The chief folly of fighting booze when you are rich is that it renders wealth utterly futile.”
“How?”