"The others are remarkable only for their size and continuity of numbers; but that last one should be framed and hung upon the wall at the foot of your bed, though you would not see it often.

I consider it a diploma of your qualification as Master Jackanapes." (Dad's vocabulary, when he is angry, contains some rather strengthy words of the old-fashioned type.) I looked at the check and began to see light.

I _had_ been a bit rollicky that time.

It wasn't drawn for very much, that check; I've lost more on one jack-pot, many a time, and thought nothing of it.

And, though the events leading up to it were a bit rapid and undignified, perhaps, I couldn't see anything to get excited over, as I could see dad plainly was.
"For a young man twenty-five years old and with brains enough--supposedly--to keep out of the feeble-minded class, it strikes me you indulge in some damned poor pastimes," went on dad disagreeably.
"Cracking champagne-bottles in front of the Cliff House--on a Sunday at that--may be diverting to the bystanders, but it can hardly be called dignified, and I fail to see how it is going to fit a man for any useful business." Business?
Lord! dad never had mentioned a useful business to me before.
I felt my eyelids fly up; this was springing birthday surprises with a vengeance.
"Driving an automobile on forbidden roads, being arrested and fined--on Sunday, at that--" "Now, look here, dad," I cut in, getting a bit hot under the collar myself, "by all the laws of nature, there must have been a time when _you_ were twenty-five years old and cut a little swath of your own.