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At the present moment Athanase, leaning pensively on his elbow at the breakfast table, was twirling his spoon in his empty cup and contemplating with a preoccupied eye the poor room with its red brick floor, its straw chairs, its painted wooden buffet, its pink and white curtains chequered like a backgammon board, which communicated with the kitchen through a glass door.
At eight o'clock that evening I was witness of a scene which touched me deeply, and which I had never yet witnessed, for in my former visits I had played backgammon with the count while his wife took the children into the dining-room before their bedtime. The bell rang twice, and all the servants of the household entered the room.
About the centre was a large pleasure house, furnished with billiard, chess, and backgammon tables. Some of the party were engaged at bowls; their game differs from ours in many respects, as here they prefer a gravel walk or uneven surface, and they throw the bowl a considerable height into the air, instead of letting it glide gently along.
"I do go to Florida every winter, and sometimes, on the way to our place, I stop for a day or two at St. Augustine yes." She looked at Jane again, as if to say, "That is really the best I can do for you." "She played backgammon with you there," Jane still persisted "on the hotel veranda. I've heard her say so twenty times." Mrs. Bates did not change her expression. "Backgammon?
Some were playing games similar to our chess and backgammon, while others were looking on, and smoking the gurgling narghile, or water-pipe. The bicycles had been put away under lock and key, and the crowd gradually dispersed.
Cornelia, already inclined to allow her companion every thing, would have seen nothing unbecoming in his being of the same mind himself. He could scarcely value himself so high as she. Meanwhile Professor Valeyon, having won his game of backgammon, hunted up his hat, made his adieux, and went to the shed for his wagon.
Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to show he could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they had passed about two-thirds of their time.
The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that subject the less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most successful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thought it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board.
And then he said he thought he would like a game of backgammon, and he challenged the parson to come on and be beaten. And at an early hour the party broke up. "For remember," said Grandpapa, for about the fiftieth time that day, "it's Antwerp to-morrow!" So it was at Antwerp that the whole splendid business was concluded. And when the story of it came out, there was a regular jubilee all around.
Yonder I fancy her enthroned in her principality of Castlewood, the country gentlefolks paying her court, the sons dutiful to her, the domestics tumbling over each other's black heels to do her bidding, the poor whites grateful for her bounty and implicitly taking her doses when they were ill, the smaller gentry always acquiescing in her remarks, and for ever letting her win at backgammon well, with all these benefits, which are more sure than fate allots to most mortals, I don't think the little Princess Pocahontas, as she was called, was to be envied in the midst of her dominions.
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