"Oh, the idea! He only runs it for me. I put up the money. You know him, eh?"
The girl nodded. "Yes; I know Mr. Clyde also."
"Who—Alton?" he queried, with reassuring warmth. "Why, you and I have got mutual friends. Alton and me is pals." He shook his head solemnly. "Ain't he a scourge?"
"I beg your pardon."
"I say, ain't he an awful thing? He ain't anything like Emerson.
There's a ring-tailed swallow, all right, all right! I like him."
"Are you very intimate with him?"
"Am I? I'm closer to him than a porous plaster. When Boyd ain't around, I'm him, that's all." From her look Fraser judged that he was progressing finely. He hastened to add: "I always like to help out young fellows like him. I like to give 'em a chance. That's my name, you know, Chancy De Benville—always game to take a chance. Is that your yacht?"
"No. My father and I are merely passengers."
"So you trailed the old skeezicks along with you? Well, that's right. Make the most of your father while you've got him. If I'd paid more attention to mine I'd have been better off now. But I was wild." Fraser winked in a manner to inform his listener that all worldly wisdom was his. "I wanted to be a jockey, and the old party cut me off. What I've got now, I made all by myself, but if I'd stayed in Bloomington I might have been president of the bank by this time."
"Bloomington! I understood you to say New Orleans."