“Oh, hang it, Gardy. For the first time in my life I wished I was clever like you and had done something. It ain’t fair. Nobody ever made me do a thing; what chance have I had to amount to anything? And then a fellow meets a girl like this, who likes you from the start and when she asks you what you’re doing, or have done, or are going to do, and you say nothin’, she looks at you in a certain way as if to say: ‘Why, what excuse do you make to yourself for cumbering the earth?’ No, by George, it ain’t fair; is it, Gardy?
“I told her I had money, and she laughed and said she didn’t understand how a man could be satisfied to have money and nothing else, and money that his father had earned at that. Then I asked her to marry me, so I would have something besides money. Hang it, old man, she cried. Yes, she did, just for a little while. Then she looked up and laughed at me, and said: ‘George, I’ve known you less than two days, and I’ve learned to like you so much that I wish I dared like you more. But if I liked you any more,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid I’d want to marry you, and have to depend upon you for my future happiness, and to be the father of my children,’ and says she, ‘you haven’t the right to ask that, George, so long as you play around like a thoughtless boy, and do nothing that a man should do.’
“Jove! That was enough to make a fellow pull up and think, wasn’t it? I said to myself right there: ‘I’m going to do something.’ And I am. I ain’t clever like you, Gardy, and I haven’t got business experience like some fellows, but—” he smiled with self-satisfaction—“I have got money.”
It all ended there. He had money; he need have nothing else. The new look vanished from his eyes and they became cynical and supercilious again. His underlip protruded cunningly.
“Science is a great help if you know how to use it, Gardy,” he chuckled. “What’s your opinion of our little expedition now?”
“I don’t see any reason why what you have told me should alter my opinion of the expedition.”
“Ha! I thought maybe that old conscientious streak in you would get troublesome. You don’t quibble about motives then, Gardy?”
“Why should I? I am your hired writing man——”
“Oh, hang it, Gardy! Don’t put it that way. Don’t be so precise. As one chap to another, you know—what do you think?”
“I see nothing wrong with your motive, Chanler. In fact, I think it rather fine. As I understand it you are undertaking this expedition because you wish to prove to this girl that you can and will do something useful.”