Mogridge looked narrowly at the boy, but apparently failed to recognize him, and he replied, “Gentlemen usually grant their antagonists an opportunity to win back the smiles of the fickle goddess.”
“Deal,” replied Rodney with an air of importance he was far from feeling.
The “Chevalier” yet loitered near, and luck continued to run in Rodney’s favour. After four hands, and with quite a little pile of winnings before him, he wanted to leave the game, but was ashamed to do so. Then Mogridge said, “Let’s double the stake,” which was done. The cards were dealt, and the play was begun, when the “Chevalier” coolly remarked, “Card exposed. You’ll have to deal over.”
Mogridge’s little eyes looked like tiny, glowing coals, and closer to his long nose than ever, but the cards were dealt again, and again the boy won. Then Mogridge and his confederate rose and left the table while Rodney sat gloating over his winnings.
“One who would accustom himself to the whimsies of Fortune must learn to lose as well as to win. In your behalf I will endeavour to instruct you in that 140 part of the game, my boy. Won’t you gentlemen remain to see that I pluck the winner fairly?”
“You’re welcome to such small game. We didn’t know we were poaching on your preserves,” replied Mogridge in a surly tone, walking away.
Rodney was surprised. He had no desire to play with his friend. Yet in a masterful way the “Chevalier” appeared to take it for granted that they would play, and proceeded to deal the cards. The boy shrank from saying or doing anything which would excite the man’s ridicule, for he had come to regard him as a superior sort of a person, and was somewhat in awe of his rather grand manner.
The first game Rodney won. Then the “Chevalier” remarked, as though he were doing the lad a favour, “Now we’ll not prolong this; I must be going. Here’s my wager.”
To meet it required the last shilling of the boy’s winnings, but he staked it all, and the “Chevalier” won, coolly swept the money into his pocket, all but a few shillings which he carelessly shoved toward the boy, saying, “You’ll need those to get home. It’s bad practice to wager one’s last farthing.”
Friends of Rodney Allison would not have recognized him now as the same fellow he was an hour before. Fury filled him to overflowing. That coveted money was gone and his own with it, taken by a man whose life he once had saved, his supposed friend, who now had plucked him as one would a pigeon. He seized the money and threw it in the Chevalier’s face, then, as he reflected what his act signified, he grasped the handle of his knife in readiness to defend himself.