Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/253

 established a connection with it, one possessed forever a stout prop in time of need. I was sure indeed that Miss Caroline had defined these limitations of Clem as a financier. It was one of those enjoyable topics which we had been free to discuss. That she had discovered how lamentably his resources had been reduced by freight tolls on her furniture I could only infer. But I knew, at least, that she was aware of the blistering, rainless summer that had laid Clem's high hopes of a garden in dust and cut off half his revenue. Plainly, Miss Caroline had more than enough of matters fit to engage her graver moments.

For my own part I, too, had matters to dwell upon of an equal gravity in their own poor way; though perhaps, too, I could not have defined them as understandingly as I did the perplexities of my neighbor.

Happily the feat need not be attempted; I had the game, in which troubles may be played away at least beyond the necessity for analyzing them—the game which requires two decks and is to be played alone—the most efficacious of those devices for the solitary which cards afford.

I had been made acquainted with its scheme and with some of its cruder virtues by a certain illustrious soldier whom I was once much thrown with. He confessed to me that he played it before a battle to inspire him with coolness, and after a battle to learn wise behavior under victory or defeat, as it might have been.

I was persuaded to learn more of it. I played the