After dinner the usual curriculum was to be expected. Ambrose and Perpetua, since Mrs. Owen was here, were to sit up to hear her sing one song, after which they would go to bed, when, since there were four present, the others would play bridge for the usual stakes, which were beans. All four players were given a little bag of dried beans, two hundred in number. At the end of each rubber Canon Alington always said, “Now for reckoning day,” and you paid your opponent (dividing the points by ten) the beans he had won, or he paid you the beans he had lost. At the end of the play you counted up your beans and announced the total. There were congratulations to the fortunate winners, condolence for the losers. The beans were then recounted and put away in the bags out of which they had been taken. Bridge was far too good a game, such was the pronouncement of Canon Alington, to make it necessary to play for stakes. To-night he added—
“You might as well skate for stakes, eh, Hugh?”
And Hugh privately thought that his brother-in-law had much better not. So he only said “Quite so.”
To-night, however, there was a little delay in beginning the curriculum, for Mrs. Owen at first positively refused to sing at all unless Hugh stopped his ears, for “she daren’t,” but abated these hard conditions and consented to give them some bit of Galahad’s diary if Hugh would sing afterward. So she sang the famous second adventure, while Agnes closed her eyes because she listened best so, and the Canon beat time with a paper-knife, and Ambrose and Perpetua turned over, their faces glued to the music. After which, though marching orders had been issued for them, they were allowed to stop and hear Uncle Hugh perform. But it was rather a handicap in that house to sing after Mrs. Owen.
Bridge was unusually exciting that night because of the wonderful winning power of Mrs. Owen, and had it not been that she revoked once in no trumps, probably the rest of the world would have been bankrupt, and what Canon Alington called the “gold reserve”—meaning another bag of beans—would have had to be put into circulation in order to enable the game to proceed. She made, too, quite the right remark when, on finding she was four hundred and twenty-eight to the good, she said, “How dreadful if we had been playing for money!”
Then, since the inexorable hour of half-past ten had arrived, she gathered up her music and put on her goloshes, for a little walk was so pleasant after these exciting games, and started home under Hugh’s escort, for her house lay between Chalkpits and the Vicarage. This was exactly what she wanted; she would see if womanliness would not lead to confidence.
“Such a treat to hear you sing, Mr. Hugh,” she said as they set off, “and such a pleasure to know that perhaps we may hear you in town again! You think there is still a chance?”
“Of course, it must depend on my wife,” said he.
Mrs. Owen gave a great sigh, and said nothing for a moment. Then the stars gave her an inspiration; they had given the same to Galahad when he said good-night.
“How peaceful starlight is!” she observed. “It makes one see how infinitesimal our own troubles are when one sees the immensity of space.”