“Have you ever seen him intemperate?” I asked.
“That would be quite needless,” Juno returned. “And of the gambling I have ocular proof, since I found him, cards, counters, and money, with my sick nephew. He had actually brought cards in his pocket.”
“I suppose,” said the Briton, “your nephew was too sick to resist him.”
The male honeymooner, with two of the et ceteras, made such unsteady demonstrations at this that Mrs. Trevise protracted our sitting no longer. She rose, and this meant rising for us all.
A sense of regret and incompleteness filled me, and finding the Briton at my elbow as our company proceeded toward the sitting room, I said: “Too bad!”
His whisper was confident. “We’ll get the rest of it out of her yet.”
But the rest of it came without our connivance.
In the sitting room Doctor Beaugarcon sat waiting, and at sight of Juno entering the door (she headed our irregular procession) he sprang up and lifted admiring hands. “Oh, why didn’t I have an aunt like you!” he exclaimed, and to Mrs. Trevise as she followed: “She pays her nephew’s poker debts.”
“How much, cousin Tom?” asked the upcountry bride.
And the gay old doctor chuckled, as he kissed her: “Thirty dollars this afternoon, my darling.”