“But if I can’t pay it?”
“Then I shall feel obliged to call on your father, and ask him to pay me.”
“You wouldn’t do that!” said Philip, panic-stricken.
“I shall feel obliged to. It is only a trifle, and he will probably pay it, giving you a little lecture, perhaps, but nothing worse.”
“You don’t know him,” said Philip, uncomfortably. “He will be awful mad. He had a cousin who was a gambler, and he has often warned me against gambling.”
“I don’t approve of gambling myself,” said Congreve; “but there is a difference between that and a little stake on a game of cards to make it interesting.”
“I don’t think father would see any difference,” suggested Philip, who did not himself understand what difference there could be.
It is hardly necessary to say to my young readers that common sense is the best teacher in such matters, and that no difference appears to common sense between gambling at cards and gambling in any other form.
“Oh, well, you know best about that. Then it would be better that I shouldn’t say anything to the old man?”
“No; don’t say anything to him about it,” said Philip, eagerly.