Here, darling!"
And she stuffs some loose silver into darling's last pocket that will
hold any more. He was already wadded with bills and sagging with coin,
till it didn't look like the same suit of clothes. Then she stood there
with a cynical smile and watched Sandy still playing his hunch, ten
dollars to a number, and never winning a bet.
"You poor dupe!" says she when Sandy himself finally got tired and quit.
"It's especially awkward," she adds, "because while we have saved enough
to start our little nook, it will have to be far less pretentious than I
was planning to make it while the game seemed to be played honestly."
Cousin Egbert gets this and says, as polite as a stinging lizard, that
he stands ready to give her a chance at any game she can think of, from
mumblety-peg up. He says if she'll turn him and Leonard loose in a
cellar that he'll give her fifty dollars for every one she's winner if
he don't have Len screaming for help inside of one minute--or make it
fifteen seconds. Len, who's about the size of a freight car, smiles kind
of sickish at this, and says he hopes there's no hard feelings among old
friends and lodge brothers; and Egbert says, Oh, no! It would just be in
the nature of a friendly contest, which he feels very much like having
one, since he can be pushed just so far; but Cora says gambling has
brutalized him.
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