“Not a bit of it. I’m breezy as a weathercock to-night. I must talk, I tell you, and you always rouse the laughing imp in me. Where’s the harm of gambling, if you win? Eh, Jack Straw?” “It’s no very good qualification for work, if that’s what you want to get, Mr. Trender.” “Work? Hang the dirty rubbish! Work’s for the poor in pocket and in spirit. I want to see life; to feel the sun of enjoyment down to my very finger-tips. You two may work, if you like, with your codes of cranky morals. You may go back to your mill every Monday morning with a guilty sense of relief that another weekly dissipation on Hampstead heath is over and done with. That don’t do for me. The shops here aren’t all iron-ware and stationery. There’s color and glitter and music and rich food and laughter everywhere around, and I want my share of it. When I’m poor I’ll work; only--I don’t ever intend to be poor again.” “Well, we don’t any of us intend to, for the matter of that,” said Duke. “Oh, but you go the wrong way about it. You’re hampered in the beginning with the notion that you were made to work, and that if you do it in fine manly fashion your wages will be paid you in full some day. Why, what owls you are not to see that those wages that you think you are storing up so patiently are all the time being spent by such as me! Here’s happiness at your elbow, in the person of Jason Trender--not up in the skies there. But it’s your nature and luckily that’s my gain. You wouldn’t know how to enjoy ten thousand a year if you had it.” “You think not?” “I know it. You’d never be able to shake off the old humbug of responsibility.” “Toward others, you mean?” “Of course I do, and that’s not the way to make out life.” “Not your way?” “Mine? Mine’s to be irresponsible and independent--to act upon every impulse and always have a cat by me to claw out the chestnuts.” “A high ideal, isn’t it?” “Don’t fire that nonsense at me. Ideal, indeed! A cant term, Jack Straw, for a sort of religious mania. No ideal ever sparkled like a bottle of champagne. I’ve been drinking it for the first time lately and learning to play euchre. I’ve not proved such a bad pupil.” He slapped the pocket to which he had returned his purse, with a joyous laugh. “Champagne’s heaven!” he cried. “I never want any better. Come out with me to-morrow and taste it. Let’s have a jaunt!” Duke shook his head. “We shouldn’t agree in our notions of pleasure,” said he. “Then, come you, Renny, and I’ll swear to show you more fun in a day than you’ve known in all your four years of London.” “I can’t, Jason. I’ve got another engagement.” “Who with?” “Never mind. But I can’t come.” “Oh, rubbish! You’ll have to tell me or else we go together.” “Neither the one nor the other.” For a moment he looked threatening. “I’m not fond of these mysteries,” he said. Then his face cleared again.