One virtue of the restlessness of which Bailly had reminded him was its power to swing George's mind for a time from his unpleasant understanding with Dalrymple. It had got even into Blodgett's blood.
"About the honestest man I can think of these days," he complained to George one morning, "is the operator of a crooked racing stable. All the cards are marked. All the dice are loaded. If they didn't have to let us in on some of the tricks, we'd go bust, George, my boy."
"You mean we're crooked, too?" George asked.
"Only by infection," Blodgett defended himself, "but honest, George, I'd sell out if I could. I'm disgusted."
George couldn't hide a smile.
"In the old days when you were coming up, you never did anything the least bit out of line yourself?"
Blodgett mopped his face with one of his brilliant handkerchiefs. His eyes twinkled.
"I've been shrewd at times, George, but isn't that legitimate? I may have made some crowds pretty sick by cutting under them, but that's business. I won't say I haven't played some cute little tricks with stocks, but that's finesse, and the other fellow had the same chance. I'm not aware that I ever busted a bank, or held a loaded gun to a man's head and asked him to hand over his clothes as well as his cash. That's the spirit we're up against now. That's why Papa Blodgett advises selling out those mill stocks we kept big blocks of at the time of the armistice."
"They're making money," George said.
Blodgett tapped a file of reports.