"If mother won't run risks--"

"You really can't expect her to sell out again."

"She ought to look upon it as an investment; but if she won't, we must
find some other way, that's all."

A threat was contained in this sentence, and Joan knew, without
asking, what the threat was. In the course of his professional life,
which now extended over six or seven years, Ralph had saved, perhaps,
three or four hundred pounds. Considering the sacrifices he had made
in order to put by this sum it always amazed Joan to find that he used
it to gamble with, buying shares and selling them again, increasing it
sometimes, sometimes diminishing it, and always running the risk of
losing every penny of it in a day's disaster. But although she
wondered, she could not help loving him the better for his odd
combination of Spartan self-control and what appeared to her romantic
and childish folly. Ralph interested her more than any one else in the
world, and she often broke off in the middle of one of these economic
discussions, in spite of their gravity, to consider some fresh aspect
of his character.

"I think you'd be foolish to risk your money on poor old Charles," she
observed. "Fond as I am of him, he doesn't seem to me exactly
brilliant. . . . Besides, why should you be sacrificed?"

"My dear Joan," Ralph exclaimed, stretching himself out with a gesture
of impatience, "don't you see that we've all got to be sacrificed?
What's the use of denying it? What's the use of struggling against it?
So it always has been, so it always will be. We've got no money and we