To be successful at this pastime, a man’s whole intellects should be engrossed by the cards, and this was by no means the case with our friend. In spite of his partner’s good-humoured entreaties to “pay attention,” he could not prevent his thoughts, and sometimes his eyes, from wandering to the sofa near the fire-place. He had never liked Brush quite as well as the rest of his companions, but on the present occasion he could not refrain from wishing him even in a hotter place than that which he had selected. The Major with devoted gallantry, having placed his back to a fire that would have roasted an ox, was holding forth in his most agreeable manner to Mrs. Merrywether and the laughing Cissy. Crasher, in the easiest of arm-chairs, was helping Mrs. Dove to make paper lights, and revolving in his own mind, while he listened amiably to the continuous discourse of his hostess, whether he wouldn’t pole up Marathon a little shorter going home, and try the more direct road against which the Reverend was in the habit of warning his guests. They would save a mile, in distance, he thought, and there was sure to be more light on their return. The Honourable had a sort of vague idea, that there was always a moon about one or two o’clock. Suddenly an explosion of laughter from the window, under cover of which the unconscious Sawyer revoked, and was immediately found out, startled the whole assembly. “How absurd you are!” exclaimed that noisy dame, in answer to some proposition of the Major’s which appeared highly amusing to the ladies on the sofa. “Now I appeal to ‘Cissy’ whether she agrees with you. Girls are the best judges. Cissy! _do_ you think the Major as invincible as he says he is?” Mr. Sawyer, on thorns to hear the answer, trumped his partner’s best with considerable emphasis, and lost _another_ trick. “It’s not fair to ask _me_,” answered Miss Dove, laughing heartily. “He knows I admire him _immensely_; I’ve always told him so!” and the three went on with their conversation, which, I am bound to say, was great nonsense, but amused them considerably all the same. After this, Struggles thought the sooner they left off whist the better. There is scarcely a mistake, of which that intricate game admits, into which Mr. Sawyer did not rush, so to speak, as if with a suicidal purpose. “Hang the fellow!” thought Struggles, eyeing his partner with a kind of good-humoured astonishment: “if he was drunk, one could understand it; never saw such a thing! never saw such cards so thrown away! and yet the man’s no fool. Oh! he _must_ be drunk! _must_ be! but carries his liquor with discretion!” and thereupon Struggles found himself looking upon his partner’s features with a more indulgent eye, and contemplating his own losses with the resignation of a man who suffers in a good cause.