Page:Over the Sliprails - 1900.djvu/28

 smoked their after-dinner smoke, and talked in subdued tones as befitted the time and the scene— great, softened, misty hills in a semicircle, and the water and harbour lights in moonlight.

The other boarders were loitering over dinner, in their rooms, or gone out; the three were alone on the balcony, which was a rear one.

Gentleman Sharper moved his position, carelessly, noiselessly, yet quickly, until he leaned on the rail close to the ferns and could overhear every word the bushies said. He had dropped his cigar overboard, and his scented handkerchief behind a fern-pot en route.

“But he looks all right, and acts all right, and talks all right— and shouts all right,” protested Steelman. “He’s not stumped, for I saw twenty or thirty sovereigns when he shouted; and he doesn’t seem to care a damn whether we stand in with him or not.”

“There you are! That’s just where it is!” said Smith, with some logic, but in a tone a wife uses in argument (which tone, by the way, especially if backed by logic or common sense, makes a man wild sooner than anything else in this world of troubles).

Steelman jerked his chair half-round in disgust. “That’s you!” he snorted, “always suspicious! Always suspicious of everybody and everything! If I found myself shot into a world where I couldn’t trust anybody I’d shoot myself out of it. Life would be worse than not worth living. Smith, you’ll never make money, except by hard graft—hard, bullocking,