“I won’t—that is, if you pay me the money in three days.”
“But how can I do it?” asked Philip, in fresh dismay.
“Put a bond in my hands, then, and I will dispose of it and give you the balance. You only owe me twenty-three dollars, and a fifty-dollar bond would leave you a handsome surplus. If it were a hundred-dollar bond it would be all the better. Think of having seventy-five dollars or more at your command.”
The prospect was tantalizing, but Philip still felt afraid to appropriate one of his father’s bonds. If it had been a fear of doing wrong, I should be glad to say so, but it was more a fear of consequences.
“After all,” he said, “perhaps I may win it back, and then there won’t be any need of raising money. You said you would give me the chance.”
“So I will. You can come to my room now, if you like, and try your luck.”
So Philip went, like a fly into the spider’s parlor, and the natural result followed.
When he left the hotel he had increased his debt to forty dollars, and the prospect looked darker than ever.
As he walked home, it is doubtful if he did not feel more uncomfortable than our unfortunate hero, whom we left, bound hand and foot, in Pegan Hill Wood.