Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/38

 That's not enough. You got to do better'n that. I bet you do too, except—Abel Morris actually dared a smile—when you play cards. You got that wrong, you know, letting down when you play cards, even a game of solitaire. That's the great secret of this life, never to let down. Do everything well you take the trouble to do at all.

With that he rose and ambled out of the room, a trifle self-consciously, but with no hesitation, and in his last glance Ambrose again caught that strange expression in the eyes which he now recognized as an expression of longing.

After the fellow's departure, the nervous necessity for giving his fingers employment no longer existing, Ambrose tossed aside the cards with a sigh of relief. At the same time he unexpectedly realized that there was something about this other fellow that was beginning to arouse his curiosity. There was a quality about his persistence which obviously set him apart from that professional class who prey on other passengers. Moreover, he certainly did not belong to that other merely pushing, inquisitive group Ambrose had encountered so frequently in New York during these past weeks. It almost seemed, on reflection, as if Abel Morris were searching for sympathy from a source which he recognized, falteringly, to