“Not at all,” said the old boy; “it is a habit I have long grown accustomed to in others.”
The young man bowed in a somewhat absurd fashion and felt for his matches. He discovered to his no small mortification that he had none. He was so used to his pipe after a meal that he really could not forgo it. He came off his perch by at least three steps and asked the old man very gently whether he had any matches.
The older man produced a box and at the same time brought out with it a little notebook and a playing card which happened to be in his pocket. The young man took the matches and lit his pipe, surveying the old man the while with a more complacent eye.
“It is very kind of you, sir,” he said a little less stiffly. He handed back the matches, wrapped his rug round his legs, sat down in his place, and knowing that one should prolong the conversation for a moment or two after a favour, said: “I see that you play cards.”
“I do,” said the old man simply; “would you like a game?”
“I don’t mind,” said the young man, who had always heard that it was unmanly and ridiculous to refuse a game of cards in a railway carriage.
The elder man laughed merrily in his strong beard as he saw his junior begin to spread somewhat awkwardly a copy of a newspaper upon his knees. “I’ll show you a trick worth two of that,” he said, and taking one of the first-class cushions, which alone of railway cushions are movable from its place, he came over to the corner opposite the young man and made a table of the cushion between them. “Now,” said he genially, “what’s it to be?”
“Well,” said the young man like one who expounds new mysteries, “do you know piquet?”
“Oh, yes,” said his companion with another happy little laugh of contentment with the world. “I’ll take you on. What shall it be?”
“Pennies if you like,” said the young man nonchalantly.