I'm going to try
to fix it in New York so's a fellow couldn't have a mother and a
stepfather like mine. You know what I mean, don't you? Darn it, a kid
suffers so! You know that joint on Sixth Avenue where I go and play
cards once in a while? Well, it was raided to-day. I wonder what Mr.
Seaton would have said if he'd been alive and I'd been there and got
pinched again!
"I'm going to throw no bluffs with you, Lucy. Gambling's in my blood.
Luigi used to say I came by my skill straight. And I get the same kind
of craving for it that a dope fiend does for dope. I don't care to
tell anybody about it, or they'd send me to an insane asylum. When I
first came from the Canyon and moved out of Minetta Lane, I swore I'd
never put foot in it again until I went in to clean it up. And I
haven't and I won't. But for the first year my nails were bitten to
the quick. If my mother--but what's the use of that! Mr. Seaton said
every man has to have a woman to whom he opens up the deep within him.
I have you and you know you've promised to help me."
"June 1.--Lucy, I've got a job tutoring for the summer. The rhetoric
teacher got it for me. It's the son of an Episcopal vicar. He is a
boy of twelve and they want him taught English and declamation.
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