"Oh, I've no doubt you can explain it very glibly," says Cora; "but it seems very queer indeed to Leonard and I, especially coming at this peculiar time, when our little home is almost within my grasp."
Cousin Egbert just walked off, though opening and shutting his hands in a nervous way, like, in fancy free, he had her out on her own lot in Price's Addition and was there abusing her fatally.
"Very well!" says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced. Here, darling!"
And she stuffs some loose silver into darling's last pocket that will hold any more. He was already wadded with bills and sagging with coin, till it didn't look like the same suit of clothes. Then she stood there with a cynical smile and watched Sandy still playing his hunch, ten dollars to a number, and never winning a bet.
"You poor dupe!" says she when Sandy himself finally got tired and quit. "It's especially awkward," she adds, "because while we have saved enough to start our little nook, it will have to be far less pretentious than I was planning to make it while the game seemed to be played honestly."
Cousin Egbert gets this and says, as polite as a stinging lizard, that he stands ready to give her a chance at any game she can think of, from mumblety-peg up. He says if she'll turn him and Leonard loose in a cellar that he'll give her fifty dollars for every one she's winner if he don't have Len screaming for help inside of one minute—or make it fifteen seconds. Len, who's about the size of a freight car, smiles kind of sickish at this, and says he hopes there's no hard feelings among old friends and lodge brothers; and Egbert says, Oh, no! It would just be in the nature of a friendly contest, which he feels very much like having one, since he can be pushed just so far; but Cora says gambling has brutalized him.
Then she sees the cards on the table and asks again about this game where you play cards with yourself and mebbe win a thousand dollars cold. She wants to know if you actually get the thousand in cash, and Egbert says:
"Sure! A thousand that any bank in town would accept at par."
She picks up the deck and almost falls, but thinks better of it.
"Could I play with my own cards?" she wants to know, looking suspicious at these. Egbert says she sure can. "And in my own home?" asks Cora.