The Captain looked at the handsome stripling for a few seconds in silent surprise.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said slowly, “that you gamble?”
“Indeed I do,” replied Lewis, with a bland smile, and something of a twinkle in his eye.
“For money?” asked the Captain.
“For money,” assented the youth; “what have you to say against it?”
“Why, I’ve to say that it’s mean.”
“That’s strong language,” said Lewis, flushing.
“It an’t strong enough by a long way,” returned the Captain, with indignation, “it’s more than mean, it’s contemptible; it’s despicable.”
The flush on Lewis’s face deepened, and he looked at his companion with the air of one who meditates knocking another down. Perhaps the massive size and strength of the Captain induced him to change his mind. It may be that there occurred to him the difficulty—if not impossibility—of knocking down a man who was down already, and the want of space in a cab for such violent play of muscle. At all events he did nothing, but looked “daggers.”
“Look ’ee here, my lad,” continued the Captain, laying his huge hand on his companion’s knee, and gazing earnestly into his face, “I don’t mean for to hurt your feelin’s by sayin’ that you are mean, or contemptible, or despicable, for I don’t suppose you’ve thought much about the matter at all, and are just following in the wake of older men who ought to know better; but I say that the thing—gambling for money—is the meanest thing a man can do, short of stealing. What does it amount to? Simply this—I want another man’s money, and the other man wants mine. We daren’t try open robbery, we would be ashamed of that; we’re both too lazy to labour for money, and labour doesn’t bring it in fast enough, therefore we’ll go play for it. I’ll ask him to submit to be robbed by me on condition that I submit to be robbed by him; and which is to be the robbed, and which the robber, shall depend on the accidental turn of a dice, or something equally trifling—”