Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/49

 a faint sigh--" not to be replaced. France and Russia have the pick of our stables. However, if it is sold, it is sold--talk no more of it. I hate painful subjects. You did right not to renew the bill--it is opening an account with Ruin; and though I avoid preaching on money matters, or, indeed, any other (preaching is my nephew's vocation, not mine), yet allow me to extract from you a solemn promise never again to sign bills, nor to draw them. Be to your friend what you please except security for him. Orestes never asked Pylades to help him to borrow at fifty per cent. Promise me--your word of honour as a gentleman! Do you hesitate?"

"My dear Colonel," said Lionel frankly, "I do hesitate. I might promise not to sign a money-lender's bill on my own account, though really I think you take rather an exaggerated view of what is, after all, a common occurrence--"

"Do I?" said the Colonel meekly. "I'm sorry to hear it. I detest exaggeration. Go on. You might promise not to ruin yourself--but you object to promise not to help in the ruin of your friend."

"That is exquisite irony, Colonel," said Lionel, piqued; but it does not deal with the difficulty, which is simply this: When a man whom you call friend--whom you walk with, ride with, dine with almost every day, says to you 'I am in immediate want of a few hundreds--I don't ask you to lend them to me, perhaps you can't--but assist me to borrow--trust to my honour that the debt shall not fall on you,--why, then, it seems as if to refuse the favour was to tell the man you call friend that you doubt his honour; and though I have been caught once in that way, I feel that I must be caught very often before I should have the moral courage to say 'No!' Don't ask me, then to promise--be satisfied with my assurance that, in future at least, I will be more cautious, and if the loss fall on me, why, the worst that can happen is to do again what I do now."

"Nay, you would not perhaps have another horse and cab to sell. In that case, you would do the reverse of what you do now--you would renew the bill--the debt would run on like a snowball--in a year or two you would owe, not hundreds, but thousands. But come in--here we are at my door."

The Colonel entered his drawing-room. A miracle of