“You play?” asked Guy, turning to Phillip.
“A little.”
“What are you going to play?” asked Boerick.
“Oh, nickel ante, I guess.”
“Too exciting; leave me out.”
“You’ll either get off that couch and take a hand or you’ll be put out,” said Guy firmly. Boerick grinned and drew a chair to the table from which Guy had swept everything unceremoniously onto the floor. But even nickel-ante didn’t prove sufficiently exhilarating to Guy, and when, after some twenty minutes of play during which Phillip won forty cents, Boerick proposed raising the limit to a dollar, he promptly agreed. Phillip hesitated. He had only about six dollars in his pocket, while his entire wealth was represented by something well under a hundred.
“I’ll look on, I reckon,” he announced.
“Oh, come on in,” urged Chester. “It won’t hurt you.”
“To lose your money,” said Guy, “is one of the few really satisfactory ways of enjoying life. That’s what money’s for—to lose. As the psalmist so sweetly sings, ‘Here to-day and gone to-morrow; squander what you’ve got, then borrow.’ Besides, it is quite within the possibilities that you’ll win enough to give us all a dinner at the Touraine. Come to think about it, fellows, I’m not sure that it isn’t a decidedly risky thing we’re doing. Virginians, you know, have a devil of a reputation for cards and pistols.”
“That was before the war,” drawled Boerick. “Virginia has degenerated. Isn’t that so, Ryerson?”