“I've tried to, Elmer--God knows I've tried to, time and time again. That's why I've come back to you once more to ask you if you won't help me. I've gone down on my knees alone and prayed for help and I've prayed with Eddie, too, and I've pleaded with him. He don't run round town carousing like some boys his age do. He don't drink and he's not wild, except it just seems like he can't leave gambling alone. Oh, he's promised me and promised me he'd quit, but he's weak--and he's only a boy. I've kept track of his losings as well as I could, and I know that first and last he's lost nearly two hundred dollars playing cards with you and your crowd. That may not be much to you, Elmer--I reckon you're rich--but it's a lot to a lone woman like me. It means bread and meat and house rent and clothes to go on my back--that's what it means to me. My feet are mighty near out of these shoes I've got on, and right this minute there's not a cent in the house. I don't say you cheated him, but the money's gone and you got it. And it's ruining my boy. He's only a boy--he won't be twenty-one till the twelfth day of next April. If only you wouldn't let him come inside your place he'd behave himself--I know he would. “So you see, Elmer, you're the only one that can make him go straight--that's why I've come back to you this second time. I reckon he ain't so much to blame. You know--yes, you've got reason to know better than anybody else--that his father before him couldn't leave playing cards alone. I hoped I could raise Eddie different. As a little thing I used to tell him playing cards were the devil's own playthings. But it seems like he can't just help it. I reckon it's in his blood.” “Whut you need then is a blood purifier,” mocked the gamester. He pointed a long forefinger toward the drug store across the street. “You'd better go on over yonder to Hinkle's and git him some. I see they're advertisn' a new brand in their window--a dollar a bottle and a cure guaranteed or else you gits your money back. Better invest!” He showed her his back as he turned to enter the Blue Jug. Pausing halfway through the swinging doors he spoke again, and since he still looked over her head perhaps he did not see the look that had come into her eyes or mark how her hands were clenching and unclenching. Or if he did see these things perhaps he did not care. “That's all I've got to say to you,” he added, “exceptin' this--I want this here to be the last time you come pesterin' me on the street.” “It will be,” she said slowly, and her voice was steady although her meagre frame shook. “It's the last time I'm coming to you on the street, Elmer, for what's mine by rights.”