Andy the horse-faced hesitates.
“You have such vile luck,” he says, as though remonstrating with mine host Brown for a fault. “It seems shameful to play with you, since you never win.”
Mine host Brown looks sheepishly apologetic.
“For one as eager to play as I am,” he responds, “it does look as though I ought to know more about the game. However, since it's your last night, we might as well preserve a record.”
Andy the horse-faced yields to the rabid anxiety of mine host Brown to gamble. The game shall be played presently; meanwhile, there is an errand which takes him to his rooms.
Andy goes to his rooms; mine host Brown, after preparing a table in the long-room for the promised game, saunters fatly—being rotund as a publican should be—into the kitchen, to leave directions concerning that triangular supper. There he encounters his wife, as rotund as himself, supervising the energies of a phalanx of black Amazons, who form the culinary forces of the Rowan House.
“Young Jackson leaves in the morning, mother,” observes mine host Brown to Mrs. Brown, whom he always addresses as “mother.”
“For good?” asks Mrs. Brown, who is singeing the pin feathers from a chicken of much fatness, and exceeding yellow as to leg.
“Oh, I knew he was going,” returns mine host Brown, rather irrelevantly. “Spruce Mc-Cay told me that he was about to advise him to emigrate to the western counties. Spruce says the Cumberland country is just the place for him.”
“And now I suppose,” remarks Mrs. Brown, “you'll let him win a good-by game of cards, to square his bill.”