“Worse and more of it. Lots of little devils in skirts chivvying around this town. Too many men fools roaming the streets with money in their pockets. ‘Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together’—only they’re not exactly eagles; they are birds of another feather. I know, because they clawed me a bit before my wallet went dry.”
“You were one of the fools?” said Philip sourly.
“You’d know it without my telling you. But to the law and the testimony. You see, the Wigglesworth family pride didn’t prevent me from keeping your kindly hint in mind—and I’ve obeyed it. Where do we begin?”
“Suppose we begin where we left off,” said Philip guardedly. “Is there any decent ambition left in you?”
Bromley took time to consider, and when he replied he was shaking his head doubtfully.
“To be perfectly frank about it, I’m not sure there has ever been anything worthy the high sounding name of ambition. You see, there is quite a lot of Bromley property scattered about in my home town—which is Philadelphia, if you care to know—and the income from it has heretofore proved fatal to anything like decent ambition on the part of a play-boy.”
“Your property?” Philip queried.
“Oh, dear, no; the governor’s. But he hasn’t kept too tight a hand on the purse strings; not tight enough, if we are to judge from the effects—the present horrible example being the most disastrous of the same. As I intimated on the scene of my latest fiasco, I stretched the rubber band once too often and it snapped back at me with a disinheriting thousand-dollar check attached. That, my dear benefactor, is my poor tale, poorly told. You see before you what might have been a man, but what probably—most probably—never will be a man.”
“Of course, if you are willing to let it go at that——” said Philip, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“You mean that I ought to pitch in and do something useful? My dear Mr. Good-wrestler——”