‘Number eight’s gone, Mary Ann,’ said the first young lady.
‘Number eleven!’ screamed the second.
‘The numbers are all taken now, ladies, if you please,’ said the first. The representatives of numbers three, eight, and eleven, and the rest of the numbers, crowded round the table.
‘Will you throw, ma’am?’ said the presiding goddess, handing the dice-box to the eldest daughter of a stout lady, with four girls.
There was a profound silence among the lookers-on.
‘Throw, Jane, my dear,’ said the stout lady. An interesting display of bashfulness—a little blushing in a cambric handkerchief—a whispering to a younger sister.
‘Amelia, my dear, throw for your sister,’ said the stout lady; and then she turned to a walking advertisement of Rowlands’ Macassar Oil, who stood next her, and said, ‘Jane is so very modest and retiring; but I can’t be angry with her for it. An artless and unsophisticated girl is so truly amiable, that I often wish Amelia was more like her sister!’
The gentleman with the whiskers whispered his admiring approval.
‘Now, my dear!’ said the stout lady. Miss Amelia threw—eight for her sister, ten for herself.
‘Nice figure, Amelia,’ whispered the stout lady to a thin youth beside her.