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centres of existence, should choose to rusticate in this
semiarcadian district, I cannot imagine. He says he can think
better in St. John's Wood.
Pasquale think! As well might a salmon declare it could sing
better in a pond! The consequence of his propinquity, however,
has been that he has dropped in several times lately on his way
home, but generally at a later hour.
Oh, please don't move and spoil the picture, he cried. Oh,
you idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had
been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for
your afterdinner entertainment, I should have sworn to
cribbage!
An excellent game, said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I
remember. I dislike cards. They bore me to death. So dus
chess. People love to call them intellectual pastimes; but,
surely, if a man wants exercise for his intellect, there are
enough problems in this complicated universe for him to worry his
brains over, with more profit to himself and the world. And as
for the pastimeI consider that when two or more intelligent
people sit down to play cards they are insulting one another's
powers of conversation. These remarks do not apply to my game
with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused. She has
picked up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this
is only the third evening we have played, she was getting the
better of me when Pasquale appeared.
I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent
game. Pasquale laughed.
Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have
played it of evenings for the last thousand years. Please go
on.
But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa
and said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.
He says such funny things.
Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of
chocolates that is never far from her side. How lithe her
movements are!
Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him
with a big stick, she remarked, turning her head toward me,
while Pasquale helped himself to a sweet.
He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from
Carlotta's hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They
both went on hands and knees to pick them up, and there was much
laughing and whispering.
It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in
Carlotta's presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to
ask when he committed the mendacityfor in that school not only
did the assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but

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