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There he was, among the standers-by, where he ought not to be; he ought to be dancing, not classing himself with the husbands, and fathers, and whist-players, who were pretending to feel an interest in the dance till their rubbers were made up, so young as he looked! He could not have appeared to greater advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself.
As you say, sir, Englishmen are good whist-players. It's their national game, I believe." "Won't be a fair match, Mr Chorley," said the dealer in hog-meat; "but since you propose it, if Mr Hatcher here your name, sir, I believe?" "Hatcher is my name," replied the person addressed, the same who suggested whist.
Vincy often said, just the sort of person for a governess. Lydgate did not mean to pay many such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to excuse himself and go. "You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when the whist-players were settled.
But the whist-players were too much interested in their game to notice the lugubrious expression of the old man, until he came to the table, and in a tone of the most alarming gravity exclaimed: "Don't be frightened!" Every lady dropped her cards and turned deadly pale with terror. Every gentleman looked up inquiringly at this judicious speaker.
This frontal attack upon the whist-players upset the game entirely, and Ranson, enthroned upon the piano-stool, addressed the room. He held up a buckskin tobacco-bag decorated with beads. "I got this down at the Indian village to-night," he said. "That old squaw, Red Wing, makes 'em for two dollars. Crosby paid five dollars for his in New Mexico, and it isn't half as good. What do you think?
There he was, among the standers-by, where he ought not to be; he ought to be dancing, not classing himself with the husbands, and fathers, and whist-players, who were pretending to feel an interest in the dance till their rubbers were made up, so young as he looked! He could not have appeared to greater advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself.
And when with his fumbling efforts he got them into a bunch, he could not straighten them out to say nothing of the labour of sorting them according to suit, which all whist-players know to be an indispensable preliminary to the game. When the opposing lady prodded him again, Frank's face changed from vivid scarlet to a dark and alarming purple.
Reclined, with the careless grace that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that diamond, ma'am!"
Few things can be drearier to the outsider than the conversation of cricketers, unless it be the recondite lore which whist-players bring forth from the depths of their extraordinary memories. But angling talk has a variety, recounts an amount of incident and adventure, and wakens a feeling of free air in a way with which the records of no other sport, except perhaps deer-stalking, can compete.
We both agreed that evacuation of the Hagen was imperative; but then, how to get out? The only way was up the esplanade to the railway station, and upon it the French shells were falling and bursting in numbers very trying to the nerves. However, there was nothing for it but to make a rush through the fire; and saying good-bye to the whist-players we sallied forth.
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