"Oh," she replied, "he was more like himself than I have seen him for a long time—since he began to break down, in fact."
He turned his eyes from her face as she looked up at him, and as he did not speak she said suggestively, "You are thinking something you don't quite like to say, but I think I know pretty nearly what it is."
"Yes?" said John, with a query.
"You think he has had too much feminine companionship, or had it too exclusively. Is that it? You need not be afraid to say so."
"Well," said John, "if you put it 'too exclusively,' I will admit that there was something of the sort in my mind, and," he added, "if you will let me say so, it must at times have been rather hard for him to be interested or amused—that it must have—that is to say—"
"Oh, say it!" she exclaimed. "It must have been very dull for him. Is that it?"
"'Father,'" said John with a grimace, "'I can not tell a lie!'"
"Oh," she said, laughing, "your hatchet isn't very sharp. I forgive you. But really," she added, "I know it has been. You will laugh when I tell you the one particular resource we fell back upon."
"Bid me to laugh, and I will laugh," said John.
"Euchre!" she said, looking at him defiantly. "Two-handed euchre! We have played, as nearly as I can estimate, fifteen hundred games, in which he has held both bowers and the ace of trumps—or something equally victorious—I should say fourteen hundred times. Oh!" she cried, with an expression of loathing, "may I never, never, never see a card again as long as I live!" John laughed without restraint, and after a petulant little moue she joined him.