"Not I," replied Arthur, "I've had enough;" and dashing open the door, he rushed against the trim figure of Clinton, who was just about to enter.
CHAPTER XIX.
| "Fate is above us all; We struggle, but what matters our endeavor? Our doom is gone beyond our own recall; May we deny or mitigate it? Never!" Miss Landon. |
"Whither so fast, whither so fast!" cried Clinton, so cheerfully, as he laid both hands on Arthur's shoulders, and playfully detained him, that he could not answer the speaker with a frown; so, holding out his hand, he shook that of the new comer heartily, and suffered himself to be led back into the card-room.
"If you hadn't have come just as you did, Clin, this chap would have been off like a shot from a shovel, his young modesty was so shocked just by my telling him the state of affairs in the house here," said Quirk, tipping back in his chair against the wall, while a sneer mingled in the smile upon his lips.
"Well, if he isn't used to such things, I don't wonder," returned Clinton, drawing Arthur to a seat by his side, and squeezing cordially the hand he still held.
"You're a pretty one to side that way," said Quirk, half angry at Clinton's remark. "If he ain't used to such things, it's time he was initiated, if he ever expects to be a man."