them. Be to your friend what you please except security for him.
Orestes never asked Pylades to help him to borrow at fifty per cent.
Promise me--your word of honour as a gentleman! Do you hesitate?"

"My dear Colonel," said Lionel frankly, "I do hesitate. I might promise
not to sign a money-lender's bill on my own account, though really I
think you take rather an exaggerated view of what is, after all, a common
occurrence--"

"Do I?" said the Colonel meekly. "I'm sorry to hear it. I detest
exaggeration. Go on. You might promise not to ruin yourself--but you
object to promise not to help in the ruin of your friend."

"That is exquisite irony, Colonel," said Lionel, piqued; but it does not
deal with the difficulty, which is simply this: When a man whom you call
friend--whom you walk with, ride with, dine with almost every day, says
to you 'I am in immediate want of a few hundreds--I don't ask you to lend
them to me, perhaps you can't--but assist me to borrow--trust to my
honour that the debt shall not fall on you,--why, then, it seems as if to
refuse the favour was to tell the man you call friend that you doubt his
honour; and though I have been caught once in that way, I feel that I
must be caught very often before I should have the moral courage to say
'No!' Don't ask me, then to promise--be satisfied with my assurance that,
in future at least, I will be more cautious, and if the loss fall on me,
why, the worst that can happen is to do again what I do now."

"Nay, you would not perhaps have another horse and cab to sell. In that
case, you would do the reverse of what you do now--you would renew the
bill--the debt would run on like a snowball--in a year or two you would
owe, not hundreds, but thousands. But come in--here we are at my door."