"I knew you didn't like him," I corrected, for I thought that what I had said ought to make a difference.
"You seem to be egging me on to swear at you, so that you may laugh."
"You know perfectly well that you can't afford to gamble."
"That has nothing to do with it, because I am not going to gamble, Jack Ward himself asked me not to play roulette."
"I suppose he can please himself about that," I retorted, and it was not altogether wise of me.
"And you will always be hearing racing 'shop,' and how much somebody won, nobody ever talks about their losses until they are stone-broke."
"Your father told me," was the answer, and instead of having got him into a hole I was badly scored off.
"Everybody has something nasty in him somewhere, Balzac said so, and he was the sort of chap who knew; if we were all perfect this wouldn't be earth," I said.
"By Jove, you have been thinking a lot," Foster replied, and he stood still in the road and laughed until I was very annoyed, for I have heard other people make remarks of that kind without any one else smiling.
"It is no use talking seriously to you," I said.
"Platitudes are not your line," he answered, and we were as far off settling about Ward as ever. I returned, however, to the main question with energy, for it seemed to me to be most important that these two men should not hate each other, if they were to be my friends. The gods did not endow me with tact, but they gave me so much courage that in a short time I can make any situation either very much better or very much worse. My mother once took in a paper which contained a Tact Problem every week, and she asked my sister and me to write down solutions and see if they were right; mine were wrong five times consecutively, so I gave up that competition, though in a negative sort of way I should have been of assistance to any competitor. I remember one of these wonderful problems was, 'At an evening party A tells B that C looks like a criminal. Shortly afterwards A finds out that C is B's husband, what ought A to do?' I said A ought to go and tell B that he liked criminals; but the answer was, 'A should do nothing.' I think it was that problem which persuaded me that I was wasting my time, I thought it too stupid for words.