He knew very well his inability to lay by any sum of money.

It was partly the fault of circumstances and partly of his temperament; and it would have been very difficult to apportion the responsibility between the two.

Even Morrison himself could not say, while confessing to the fact.
With a worried air he ascribed it to fatality: "I don't know how it is that I've never been able to save.

It's some sort of curse.

There's always a bill or two to meet." He plunged his hand into his pocket for the famous notebook so well known in the islands, the fetish of his hopes, and fluttered the pages feverishly.
"And yet--look," he went on.