"The swan-song of these tender napoleons!"
Merrihew had played the numbers, the dozens, the columns, the colors, odd and even. Sometimes he would win a little, but a moment later the relentless rake would drag it back to the bank. His chance to play the good Samaritan to the derelicts of the American Comic Opera Company was fast approaching the dim horizon of lost opportunities. Presently he screwed the monocle into his eye and squinted at the sea, the palaces on the promontory, the yachts in the harbor, all tranquil in shadowy moonlight.
"Nature has done this very prettily. Quite clever with her colors, don't you know," he drawled, plucking the down on his upper lip, for he was trying to raise a mustache, convinced that two waxed points of hair at each corner of his mouth would impress the hotel waiters and other facchini—baseborn.
"Don't be a jackass!" Hillard was out of sorts.
"You agreed with me that I was one. Why not let me make a finished product?" good-humoredly.
"You will have your joke."
"Yes, even at the expense of being blind in one eye; for I can't see through this glass; positive stove-lid. Every time I focus you, you grow as big as a house. No, I'd never be happy as a lord. Well, let us have our last fling. You might as well let me have my letter of credit now."
"You will not set eyes upon it till we return to Genoa. That's final. I know you, my boy, and I know Monte Carlo. Even with your fifty, a watch and a ring, I'm afraid to trust you out of sight."
"I can see that you will never forgive nor forget—those cigars. Come on. We'll take a look at our Italian friend. He's a bad loser. I have seen him lose his temper, too. It's my opinion that he's a desperate man."
"They usually are when they come to Monte Carlo."