"No," said Mr. Holiday; "for in one or two trials made by chance passengers coming along to such a place, the result must depend much more on chance than on adroitness or skill.
"I will tell you what you may do, Rollo," continued Mr. Holiday. "You may pay the man the two sous and try the experiment, provided you determine beforehand not to take any prize if you succeed. Then you will pay your money simply for the use of his apparatus, to amuse yourself with a gymnastic performance, and not stake it in hope of a prize."
"Well," said Rollo, "that is all I want." And off he ran.
"It seems to me that that is a very nice distinction that you made," said Mr. George, as soon as Rollo had gone, "and that those two things are very near the line."
"Yes," replied Mr. Holiday, "it is a nice distinction, but it is a very true one. The two things are very near the line; but then, one of them is clearly on one side, and the other on the other. For a boy to pay for the use of such an apparatus for the purpose of trying his eye and his hand is clearly right; but to stake his money in hopes of winning a prize is wrong, for it is gaming. It is gaming, it is true, in this case, on an exceedingly small scale. Still it is gaming, and so is the beginning of a road which has a very dreadful end. Is not it so?"
"Yes," said Mr. George, "I think it is."
As might have been expected, Rollo did not succeed in covering one of the disks. The disks that he threw spread all over the board. The money that he paid was, however, well spent, for he had much more than two sous' worth of satisfaction in making the experiment.
Rollo found a great many other things to interest him in the various stalls and stands that he visited; but at length he got tired of them all, and, coming back to the carriage, told his father that he was ready to go home.
"Very well," said his father. "I don't know but that your uncle George and I are ready, too, though we have not quite got through with our papers. But we can finish them at home."
So Rollo and Carlos got into the carriage, and all the party went home to dinner.