And if it's the thing to do, and the time to do it"-- he turned on Plank with his boisterous and misleading laugh and clapped him on the shoulder--"it will be done, as sure as snobs are snobs; and that's the surest thing you ever bet on.

Here's to them!" and he emptied his glass and fell back into his chair, wheezing and sucking at his unlighted cigar.
"I want to say," began Plank, speaking the more slowly because he was deeply in earnest, "that all this you are doing for me is very handsome of you, Mortimer.

I'd like to say--to convey to you something of how I feel about the way you and Mrs.Mortimer--" "Oh, Leila has done it all." "Mrs.Mortimer is very kind, and you have been so, too.

I--I wish there was something--some way to--to--" "To what ?" asked Mortimer so bluntly that Plank flushed up and stammered: "To be--to do a--to show my gratitude." "How?
You're scarcely in a position to do anything for us," said Mortimer, brutally staring him out of countenance.
"I know it," said Plank, the painful flush deepening.
Mortimer, fussing and growling over his cigar, was nevertheless stealthily intent on the game which had so long absorbed him.

His wits, clogged, dulled by excesses, were now aroused to a sort of gross activity through the menace of necessity.