“It’s tiresome saving from one’s daily pay. I want to make a strike. Some day I shall. I might win five hundred dollars in the next week. When I do I’ll bid the old man good-by, and set out for the mines.”
“I believe in saving. A friend of mine, now in San Francisco, warned me to keep clear of the gambling-houses, and I would be sure to get on.”
Albert Benton regarded Grant suspiciously.
“Does the boy know I gamble, I wonder?” he said to himself.
“Your friend’s an old fogy,” he said, contemptuously.
“Don’t you think his advice good?”
“Well, yes; I don’t believe in gambling to any extent, but I have been in once or twice. It did me no harm.”
If he had told the truth, he would have said that he went to the gambling-house nearly every evening.
“It’s safest to keep away, I think.”
“Well, yes, perhaps it is, for a kid like you.”