“You don’t ever touch the cards now, mother?” he said all at once, with a guilty air, which she, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not perceive. “The cards?--I never did when I could help it, you know.” “I know,” he said, “but I don’t suppose there’s no harm in it; it ain’t you as puts them how they come. All you’ve got to do with it is saying what it means. Folks in the Bible did the same--Joseph, for one, as was carried to the land of Egypt.” The Bible was all the lore Dick had. He liked the Old Testament a great deal better than the ‘Headless Horseman;’ and, like other well-informed persons, he was glad to let his knowledge appear when there was an occasion for such exhibitions. His mother shook her head. “It’s no harm, maybe, to them that think no harm,” she said; “no, it ain’t me that settles them--who is it? It must be either God or the devil. And God don’t trouble Himself with the like of that--He has more and better to do; so it must be the devil; and I don’t hold with it, unless I’m forced for a living. I can’t think as it’s laid to you then.” “I wish you’d just do it once to please me, mother; it couldn’t do no harm.” She shook her head, but looked at him with questioning eyes. “Suppose it was to please a gentleman, as I am more in debt to than I can ever pay--more than I want ever to pay,” cried Dick, “except in doing everything to please him as long as I live. You may say it ain’t me as can do this, and that I’m taking it out of you; but you’re all I have to help me, and it ain’t to save myself. Mother, it’s Mr Ross as has heard somehow how clever you are; and if you would do it just once to please him and me!” She did not answer for a few minutes. Dick thought she was struggling with herself to overcome her repugnance. Then she replied, in an altered and agitated voice, “For him I’ll do it--you can bring him to-morrow.” “How kind you are, mother!” said Dick, gratefully. “College breaks up the day after to-morrow,” he added, in a dolorous voice. “I don’t know what I shall do without him and all of them--the place won’t look the same, nor I shan’t feel the same. Mayn’t he come to-night? I think he’s going off to-morrow up to Scotland, as they’re all talking of. Half of ’em goes up to Scotland. I wonder what kind of a place it is. Were we ever there?” “Once--when you were quite a child.” “‘Twas there the t’other little chap died?” said Dick, compassionately. “Poor mammy, I didn’t mean to vex you. I wonder what he’d have been like now if he’d lived. Look here, mother, mayn’t _he_ come to-night?” “If you like,” she said, trying to seem calm, but deeply agitated by this reference. He saw this, and set it down naturally to the melancholy recollections he had evoked.