Tears filled Beau’s eyes. “All my life,” he recited, “I’ve done just one thing and one thing only, scrimped and sweat and slaved and hit the old ball, so you and Lenore could have a fine life. I have no pleasures of my own, no vices, no indulgences—”
She was looking at him, white-faced, oblivious to his stale stock of good providing.
“Those—‘bonuses,’ you called them! The ‘little windfalls,’ you said! The fur coat you got Lenore! The new deep-freeze you made a little killing just in time to pay for! All that?”
“A man,” he responded in a ghastly tone, “can get so devoted to his family he’ll stop at nothing for their sake—”
Netta said a word she had learned in her childhood environs, monosyllabic and succulent-sounding. It was one of the first words she had ever known. She sat up. “You’ve been gambling!”
“How do you know?”
“Horses!”
“And I did all right.” Her guess seemed to release him. “And if I had some real dough to lay on the line, I could get back what I’m down—!”
“Where? What bookie. Jake! That was Jake on the phone!”
Now, for the first time, Netta was more frightened than angry. “Beau, do you really owe Jake Tanetti five thousand dollars?”