"Just as bad; the horses went first, and then some speculations--safe enough they seemed, and, sure enough, went wrong. So that, with one thing and another, I hardly knew which way to turn. To tell the truth, I simply can't go back to England. I have a vague idea of a perfect fog of creditors. I have been able to let the Priory, but the place is mortgaged up to the hilt; and devilish hard work it is to pay the interest; and hard luck it is altogether," the Captain repeated. "Especially hard on a man like me. My wife is perfectly happy. I keep all worry from her; she doesn't know anything about my troubles; she lives as she has always lived. I make that a point, sacrifice myself rather than deprive her of one luxury." The tone in which the Captain alluded to his privations rather made Peter doubt their reality. "And the two children live as they enjoy it most; a very jolly time they have of it. But what is my life, I ask you?" The Captain's voice was very resentful. Odd almost felt that he in some way was to blame for the good gentleman's unhappy situation. "What is my life, I ask you? I go dragging from post to pillar with stale politics in the morning, and five o'clock tea in grass widows' drawing-rooms for all distraction. Paris is full of grass widows," he added, with an even deepened resentment of tone; "and I never cared much about the play, and French actresses are so deuced ugly, at least I find them so, even if I cared about that sort of thing, which I never did--much," and the Captain drew disconsolately at his cigar, taking it from his lips to look at the tip as they passed beneath a lamp. "I can hardly afford myself tobacco any longer," he declared, "smokable tobacco. Thought I'd economize on these, and they're beastly, like all economical things!" And the Captain cast away the cigar with a look of disgust. Peter offered him a substitute. "You are a lucky dog, Odd, to come to contrasts," the Captain paused to shield his lighted match as he applied it to the fresh cigar; "I don't see why things should be so deuced uneven in this world. One fellow born with a silver spoon in his mouth--and you've got a turn for writing, too; once one's popular, that's the best paying thing going, I suppose--and the other hunted all over Europe, through no fault of his own either. Rather hard, I think, that the man who doesn't need money should be born with a talent for making it." "It certainly isn't just." "Damned unjust."