Project Gutenberg's The Man Who Could Not Lose, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: The Man Who Could Not Lose

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1760]
Release Date: May, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LOSE ***

Produced by Aaron Cannon

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LOSE

by Richard Harding Davis

The Carters had married in haste and refused to repent at leisure. So
blindly were they in love, that they considered their marriage their
greatest asset. The rest of the world, as represented by mutual friends,
considered it the only thing that could be urged against either of them.
While single, each had been popular. As a bachelor, young "Champ" Carter
had filled his modest place acceptably. Hostesses sought him for dinners
and week-end parties, men of his own years, for golf and tennis, and
young girls liked him because when he talked to one of them he never
talked of himself, or let his eyes wander toward any other girl. He had
been brought up by a rich father in an expensive way, and the rich
father had then died leaving Champneys alone in the world, with no
money, and with even a few of his father's debts. These debts of honor
the son, ever since leaving Yale, had been paying off. It had kept him
very poor, for Carter had elected to live by his pen, and, though he
wrote very carefully and slowly, the editors of the magazines had been
equally careful and slow in accepting what he wrote.

With an income so uncertain that the only thing that could be said of it
with certainty was that it was too small to support even himself,
Carter should not have thought of matrimony. Nor, must it be said to his
credit, did he think of it until the girl came along that he wanted to
marry.

The trouble with Dolly Ingram was her mother. Her mother was a really
terrible person. She was quite impossible. She was a social leader, and
of such importance that visiting princes and society reporters, even
among themselves, did not laugh at her. Her visiting list was so small
that she did not keep a social secretary, but, it was said, wrote her
invitati