The attempt at nonchalance cost him a palpable effort. Comparatively small as the amount was, he needed it. He was in sore straits. By hook or crook he must stave off an evil day whose approach he knew not how to meet.
"It isn't that it is inconvenient, Hugh," said Harry. "It's that I can't approve your manner of living lately, and—I don't know where the fifty is going."
The mark on Hugh's brow reddened. "I wasn't aware that I was expected to render you an accounting," he said sulkily, "if I do borrow a dollar or two now and then! What if I play cards, and drink a little when I'm dry? I've got to have a bit of amusement once in a while between prayers. You liked it yourself well enough, before you discovered a sudden talent for preaching!"
"Some men hide their talents under a napkin," said Harry. "You drown yours—in a bottle. You have been steadily going downhill. You are deceiving your father—and others—with a pretended reform which isn't skin-deep! You have made them believe you are living straight, when you are carousing; that you keep respectable company, when you have taken up with a besotted and discredited gambler!"
"I suppose you mean Doctor Moreau," returned Hugh. "There are plenty of people in town who are worse than he is."
"He is a quack—dropped from the hospital staff for addiction to drugs, and expelled from his club for cheating at cards."
"He's down and out," said Hugh sullenly, "and any cur can bite him. He never cheated me, and I find him better company than your sanctimonious, psalm-singing sort. I'm not going to give him the cold shoulder because everybody else does. I never went back on a friend yet. I'm not that sort!"
A steely look had come to Harry Sanderson's eyes; he was thinking of the house in the aspens. While he talked, shooting pictures had been flashing through his mind. Now, at the boast of this eager protester of loyalty, this recreant who "never went back on a friend," his face set like a flint.