"Stakes?" inquired Mrs. Lorrimore with businesslike directness.
"Your pleasure," replied Judge Wicklow in the deep, thick voice celebrated and feared where judicial procedures are thickest and most unimportant.
"Neither Mr. Edgerton nor I care to gamble--I think," said Mrs. Rivett timidly.
The judge turned his bovine countenance on Edgerton. The only anomaly in it seemed to be his eyebrows. Cows have no eyebrows.
The judge seemed sorry, too, but he shuffled the two packs in his enormous and hairy hands, dealt, and deposited the surplus in a pile with a single card separate and face upward--the ace of hearts.
Mrs. Lorrimore promptly picked it up, laid down three aces, four fours, a small sequence interiorly made possible by a joker, and sat back triumphantly with her depleted suit in her gemmed fingers, which were pressed comfortably to an ample bosom.
"Oh, I _beg_ pardon!" She laughed, and laid down a nine.
Nobody ever wants a nine, somehow. The judge snorted, helped himself, discarded, and turned his heavy countenance on his hostess.
"Dear me," she said in her humble little voice, "I--I'm afraid--_afraid_ I'm going out!"
"What!" thundered his honor. "Nobody ever goes out first hand, madam!"
But she timidly did that very thing to the suppressed fury of his honor, who had cherished a long sequence, according to rule, and was further nursing the other joker and three kings.
"It's too bad," she ventured, looking around at Edgerton, whose entire hand was being minutely counted by Mrs. Lorrimore.
"_I_ don't mind!" said the young fellow, laughing; and he leaned a trifle nearer and added under his breath: "But suppose I _had_ played for stakes!"
Into her timid and faded eyes came the ghost of a glimmer--the momentary sparkle of fun, and went out very quickly.
But it had been there for a second; and thereafter Edgerton found a curious pleasure in making it come back at intervals. She even laughed--even ventured to provoke his laughter--rather scared at trying until his quick mirth set her at momentary ease again.
Luck bedeviled his honor; the fair Mrs. Lorrimore won steadily without the least respect for the law and no consideration at all for the sanctity of the bench; and the judge became peevish. He was a very rich man.