“So do I. So I did, last night, and lost another thousand. It is utterly monstrous.”
“By Jove! that is really very extraordinary,” exclaimed little Van. “I tried it, too, last night. Tom Franklyn had some fellows to sup with him, and I went in, and they were playing loo; and I lost thirty-seven pounds more!”
“Thirty-seven confounded flea-bites! Why, don't you see how you torture me with your nonsense? If you can't talk like a man of sense, for Heaven's sake, shut up, and don't distract me in my misery.”
He emphasised the word with a Lilliputian thump with the side of his fist—that which presents the edge of the doubled-up little finger and palm—a sort of buffer, which I suppose he thought he might safely apply to the pane of glass on which he had been drumming. But he hit a little too hard, or there was a flaw in the glass, for the pane flew out, touching the window-sill, and alighted in the area with a musical jingle.
“There! see what you made me do. My luck! Now we can't talk without those brutes at that open window, over the way, hearing every word we say. By Jove, it is later than I thought! I did not sleep last night.”
“Nor I, a moment,” said Van.
“It seems like a week since that accursed race, and I don't know whether it is morning or evening, or day or night. It is past four, and I must dress and go to my uncle—he said five. Don't leave me, Van, old fellow! I think I should cut my throat if I were alone.”
“Oh, no, I'll stay with pleasure, although I don't see what comfort there is in me, for I am about the most miserable dog in London.”
“Now don't make a fool of yourself any more,” said Richard Arden. “You have only to tell your aunt, and say that you are a prodigal son, and that sort of thing, and it will be paid in a week. I look as if I was going to be hanged—or is it the colour of that glass? I hate it. I'll leave these cursed lodgings. Did you ever see such a ghost?”
“Well, you do look a trifle seedy: you'll look better when you're dressed. It's an awful world to live in,” said poor Van.