V.—The Gamesters.
"It's about time," said Simpson one evening, "that we went to the tables and—er——" (he adjusted his spectacles)—"had a little flutter."
We all looked at him in silent admiration.
"Oh, Samuel," sighed Myra, "and I promised your aunt that you shouldn't gamble while you were away."
"But, my dear Myra, it's the first thing the fellows at the club ask you when you've been to the Riviera—if you've had any luck."
"Well, you've had a lot of luck," said Archie. "Several times when you've been standing on the heights and calling attention to the beautiful view below I've said to myself, 'One push, and he's a deader,' but something, some mysterious agency within, has kept me back."
"All the fellows at the club——"
Simpson is popularly supposed to belong to a Fleet Street Toilet and Hairdressing Club, where for three guineas a year he gets shaved every day, and his hair cut whenever Myra insists. On the many occasions when he authorises a startling story of some well-known statesman with the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. I heard it at the club to-day from a friend of his," then we know that once again the barber's assistant has been gossiping over the lather.
"Do think, Samuel," I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you could be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside the rooms. And then when the hairdress—when your friends at the club ask if you've had any luck at the tables you just say coldly, 'What tables?'"
"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "Quae mensæ?"