The Graysons: A Story of IllinoisEggleston, Edward
General
The Graysons: A Story of Illinois
Eggleston, Edward
Illinois -- Fiction; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Fiction; Presidents -- United States -- Fiction
"That's all you know about it," said Dave, who noted every token of
Tom's suffering as an additional element in his triumph. "That may be
your Illinois way, but that isn't the way we play in New Orleans.
Winnings is winnings where I learnt the game." And he proceeded to lay
Tom's things in a neat pile convenient for transportation.
"Aw! come now, Dave," said one and another, "'t a'n't the fair thing to
send a fellow home to his folks barefooted and in his shirt-sleeves."
But Dave smiled in supercilious contempt at this provincial view of
things, and cited the usages of the superior circles to which he had
gained admission.
Lockwood at length lent Tom the money to redeem his garments, and the
necessity which obliged him to borrow from the man who had got him into
the scrape was the bitterest of all the bitter elements in Tom's defeat.
He went out into the fresh air and walked home mechanically. His
dashing, headlong ways had already partly alienated his uncle, and the
only hope of Tom's retaining his assistance long enough to complete his
law studies lay in the chance that his relative might fail to hear of
this last escapade. It was clear to Tom without much canvassing of the
question that he could not borrow from him the money to replace what he
had gotten from Lockwood to redeem his clothes. He entered the garden by
the back gate, climbed up to the roof of the wood-shed by means of a
partition fence, and thence managed to pull himself into the window of
his own chamber as stealthily as possible, that his uncle's family might
not know that he had come home at half-past twelve. He stood a long
while in the breeze at the open window watching the shadows of clouds
drift over the moonlit prairie, which stretched away like a shoreless
sea from the back of his uncle's house. He could not endure to bring his
thoughts all at once to bear on his affairs; he stood there uneasily and
watched these flitting black shadows come and go, and he gnashed his
teeth with vexation whenever a full sense of his present misery and his
future perplexities drifted over him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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