Jack didn't want any high-ball, and said so. (Biffy didn't care if he did.) The boy's mind was still on the scoop, particularly on the way in which every one of his fellow-members had spoken of the incident.
“Horrid business, all of it. Don't you think so, Garry?” Jack said after a pause.
“No, not if you keep your eyes peeled,” answered Garry, emptying his glass. “Never saw Gilbert but once, and then he looked to me like a softy from Pillowville. Couldn't fool me, I tell you, on a deal like that. I'd have had a 'stop order' somewhere. Served Gilbert right; no business to be monkeying with a buzz-saw unless he knew how to throw off the belt.”
Jack straightened his shoulders and his brows knit. The lines of the portrait were in the lad's face now.
“Well, maybe it's all right, Garry. My own opinion is that it's no better than swindling. Anyway, I'm mighty glad Uncle Arthur isn't mixed up in it. You heard what Sam and the other fellows thought, didn't you? How would you like to have that said of you?”
Garry tossed back his head and laughed.
“Biffy, are you listening to his Reverence, the Bishop of Cumberland? Here endeth the first lesson.”
Biff nodded over his high-ball. He wasn't listening—discussions of any kind bored him.
“But what do you care, Jack, what they say—what anybody says?” continued Garry. “Keep right on. You are in the Street to make money, aren't you? Everybody else is there for the same purpose. What goes up must come down. If you don't want to get your head smashed, stand from under. The game is to jump in, grab what you can, and jump out, dodging the bricks as they come. Let's go up-town, old man.”
Neither of the young men was expressing his own views. Both were too young and too inexperienced to have any fixed ideas on so vital a subject.