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And finally, there is the long idleness between business interviews, with nothing to do save sit there quiet-like and think about the queerness of things in general: and that is always rare employment for a poet, even without the tatters of so many lives and homes heaped up about him like spillikins.
Spillikins was saying, with quite a quaver in his voice, "By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never thought for a moment that she'd have me, you know a woman like her, with so much attention and everything. I can't imagine what she sees in me." Which was just as well. And then Mr.
If the rather vague Victorian public did not appreciate the deep and even tragic ethics with which Stevenson was concerned, still less were they of a sort to appreciate the French finish and fastidiousness of his style; in which he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins.
After that the games were understood to be more or less in the form of lessons, which put Mr. Spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and allowed any bad strokes on his part to be viewed as a form of indulgence. Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, it was Norah's part to pick up the balls at the net and throw them back to Mr. Spillikins.
For a time he felt so sure that she meant to have him that he began bringing his greatest friend, Edward Ruff of the college football team, of whom Spillikins was very proud, up to the Lightleighs' residence. He specially wanted Adelina and Edward to be great friends, so that Adelina and he might ask Edward up to the house after he was married.
She keeps it to herself. And naturally, with such a sympathetic listener, it was not long before Mr. Spillikins had begun to talk of Dulphemia and his hopes. "I don't know whether she really cares for me or not," said Mr. Spillikins, "but I have pretty good hope. The other day, or at least about two months ago, at one of the Yahi-Bahi meetings you were not in that, were you?" he said breaking off.
Mrs Bosenna, seated at the head of her polished mahogany table and engaged upon a game of "spillikins" which is a solitary trial of skill, and consists in lifting, one by one, with a delicate ivory hook a mass of small ivory pieces tangled as intricately as the bones in a kingfisher's nest showed no more than a pretty surprise at the intrusion.
Spillikins; "we shan't have any more tennis." "Goodbye," said Norah, and as she said it and put out her hand there were tears brimming up into her eyes. But Mr. Spillikins, being short of sight, didn't see them. "Goodbye," he said. Then as the motor carried her away he stood for a moment in a sort of reverie.
P. Spillikins, who says that all men are born free and equal"; and the next day a picture with the words, "Tract of ground offered for cemetery by Mr. Furlong, showing rear of tanneries, with head of Mr. Furlong inserted." It was, of course, plain enough that certain of the aldermen of the old council were to be reckoned as part of the cohort of darkness. That at least was clear.
Another time, when Monsieur Origet had announced positively that the count was convalescent, I was lying with Jacques and Madeleine on the step of the portico intent on a game of spillikins which we were playing with bits of straw and hooks made of pins; Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep. The doctor, while waiting for his horse to be harnessed, was talking with the countess in the salon.
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