Part 9 (1/2)

MISS JEMIMA.--”Very true: what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor.”

MRS. DALE.--”It is astonis.h.i.+ng how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once,--before the squire--” Mrs.

Dale paused, looked towards the squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. ”Yes,” she added, after a pause, ”we were very poor, but we were happy even then,--more thanks to Charles than to me;” and tears from a new source again dimmed those quick, lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand.

MISS JEMIMA.--”It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less because he was poor.”

MRS. DALE.--”I wonder the squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him!”

The squire's voice from the card-table.--”Whom ought I to ask more often, Mrs. Dale?”

Parson's voice, impatiently.--”Come, come, come, squire: play to my queen of diamonds,--do!”

SQUIRE.--”There, I trump it! pick up the trick, Mrs. H.”

PARSON.--”Stop! Stop! trump my diamond?”

THE CAPTAIN (solemnly).--”'Trick turned; play on, Squire.”

SQUIRE.--”The king of diamonds.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.--”Lord! Hazeldean, why, that's the most barefaced revoke,--ha, ha, ha! trump the queen of diamonds and play out the king!

well, I never! ha, ha, ha!”

CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in tenor).--”Ha, ha, ha!”

SQUIRE.--”Ho, ho, ho! bless my soul! ho, ho, ho!”

CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in ba.s.s).--”Ho, ho, ho!”

Parson's voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his adversaries and the firm, clear tone of Captain Barnabas.--”Three to our score!--game!”

SQUIRE (wiping his eyes).--”No help for it; Harry, deal for me. Whom ought I to ask, Mrs. Dale?” (Waxing angry.) ”First time I ever heard the hospitality of Hazeldean called in question!”

MRS. DALE.--”My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but listeners--you know the proverb.”

SQUIRE (growling like a bear).--”I hear nothing but proverbs ever since we had that Mounseer among us. Please to speak plainly, ma'am.”

Mrs. DALE (sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly accosted).--”It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, Mr.

Hazeldean.”

SQUIRE.--”What! Rickeybockey?”

MRS. DALE (attempting the pure Italian accentuation).--”Signor Riccabocca.”

PARSON (slapping his cards on the table in despair).--”Are we playing at whist, or are we not?”

The squire, who is fourth player, drops the king to Captain Higginbotham's lead of the ace of hearts. Now the captain has left queen, knave, and two other hearts, four trumps to the queen, and nothing to win a trick with in the two other suits. This hand is therefore precisely one of those in which, especially after the fall of that king of hearts in the adversary's hand, it becomes a matter of reasonable doubt whether to lead trumps or not. The captain hesitates, and not liking to play out his good hearts with the certainty of their being trumped by the squire, nor, on the other hand, liking to open the other suits, in which he has not a card that can a.s.sist his partner, resolves, as becomes a military man in such dilemma, to make a bold push and lead out trumps in the chance of finding his partner strong and so bringing in his long suit.

SQUIRE (taking advantage of the much meditating pause made by the captain).--”Mrs. Dale, it is not my fault. I have asked Rickeybockey,--time out of mind. But I suppose I am not fine enough for those foreign chaps. He'll not come,--that's all I know.”