“You may get deeper into the mire.”
“Yes—there’s that chance.”
“It will never do to go on playing.”
“Will you tell me what else I am to do? I must continue to play: or pay.”
I couldn’t tell him; I didn’t know. Fifty of the hardest problems in Euclid were nothing to this. Tod sat down in his shirt-sleeves.
“Get one of the Pells to let you have the money, Tod. A loan of twenty or thirty pounds can be nothing to them.”
“It’s no good, Johnny. Gusty is cleaned out. As to Fabian, he never has any spare cash, what with one expensive habit and another. Oh, I shall win it back again: perhaps to-morrow. Luck must turn.”
Tod said no more. But what particularly struck me was this: that, to win money from a guest in that way, and he a young fellow not of age, whose pocket-money they knew to be limited, was not at all consistent with the idea of their being “gentlemen.”
The next evening we were in a well-known billiard-room. Fabian Pell, Crayton, and Tod were at pool. It had been a levee day, or something of that sort, and Fabian was in full regimentals. Tod was losing, as usual. He was no match for those practised players.
“I wish you would get me a glass of water, Johnny,” he said.