"Don't, please,—not just now—give it to me good later—to-morrow—all you want to!"
"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work. I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a young one."
"Please don't, Uncle Peter!"
"You led us in—robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you—I might 'a' known better."
"Can't you stop awhile—just a moment?"
"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy—prob'ly she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store—poor Pish—she'll be lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them hills—like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about twelve million."
"Awful—awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to go to the poorhouse?"
"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up straight and make 'em bring on another deck."
He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow.
"We can't—we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our time of life."