Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/51

 The stranger's game was so remarkable that quite a group of men collected round the table to watch it. After a few games in which he was rather badly beaten, Farwell remembered an engagement, and excusing himself left his new friend the centre of an admiring group, and walked off to his lodgings over the baker's shop in John Street. They were comfortable rooms enough, the little bedroom and parlor which he had hired for the months of August and September, and he threw himself into the black horsehair rocking-chair, which his landlady had lent him from her own sitting-room, and lighting his pipe divested himself of his coat and boots,—a thing which every true-born American does immediately on entering the privacy of his own apartment.

Something besides the smile of Gladys had occurred to please Charles Farwell. Loving her as he had all his life, and understanding her as thoroughly as he did, her kindness and her unkindness usually depressed him equally,