ternoons either in the whist-room or at the billiard-table.

The story of the Silverbridge row had to be told again, and was told
nearly with the same incidents as had been narrated to the father.
He could of course abuse Arthur Fletcher more roundly, and be more
confident in his assertion that Fletcher had insulted his wife. But
he came as quickly as he could to the task which he had on hand.
"What's all this between you and your father?"

"Simply this. I sometimes play a game of whist, and therefore he
called me a gambler. Then I reminded him that he also sometimes
played a game of whist, and I asked him what deduction was to be
drawn."

"He is awfully angry with you."

"Of course I was a fool. My father has the whip-hand of me, because
he has money and I have none, and it was simply kicking against the
pricks to speak as I did. And then too there isn't a fellow in London
has a higher respect for his father than I have, nor yet a warmer
affection. But it is hard to be driven in that way. Gambler is a
nasty word."

"Yes, it is; very nasty. But I suppose a man does gamble when he
loses so much money that he has to ask his father to pay it for him."

"If he does so often, he gambles. I never asked him for money to pay
what I had lost before in my life."

"I wonder you told him."

"I never lie to him, and he ought to know that. But he is just the
man to be harder to his own son than to anybody else in the world.
What does he want me to do now?"

"I don't know that he wants you to do anything," said Lopez.

"Did he send you to me?"

"Well;--no; I can't say that he did. I told him I should see you as a
matter of course, and he said something rough,--about your being an
ass."

"I dare say he did."

"But if you ask me," said Lopez, "I think he would take it kindly of
you if you were to go and see him. Come and dine to-day, just as if
nothing had happened."

"I could not do that,--unless he asked me."

"I can't say that he asked you, Everett. I would say so, in spite
of its being a lie, if I didn't fear that your father might say
something unkind, so that the lie would be detected by both of you."

"And yet you ask me to go and dine there!"

"Yes, I do. It's only going away if he does cut up rough. And if he
takes it well,--why then,--the whole thing is done."

"If he wants me, he can ask me."

"You talk about it, my boy, just as if a father were the same as
anybody else. If I had a father with a lot