All four looked up for an instant at the threatened stranger; for your good player, intent on gain, detests the introduction of an unknown hand. Somehow or other, although the odds are two to one, “it's always his cursed luck to have him for a partner.” General Prim, who had been a martinet in the Peninsula, and as offensive to his fellow-creatures as less favourable circumstances had permitted ever since, gave a ferocious grin, and shook his single scalp-lock of gray hair like a malignant pantaloon. The Hon. Pink Hawthorne, attache at the court at Christiana, but absent from that lively capital upon sick-leave, wrenched his fair moustache this way and that, and frowned as gloomily as his foolish forehead would permit. The dealer, a Mr Roberts, an ancient bencher of one of the Inns of Court, paused with the trump card in his fingers still unturned. “Does your friend know what the Blue Peter means, Lisgard?”
“I've been a sailor half my life, sir, and it's devilish odd if I did not.” returned Ralph Derrick grimly.
“What the devil did the fellow mean?” added he to Walter as the game began, and all the four became at once automatons.
“It's the new system of asking for trumps,” answered Walter peevishly. “The same thing that they called the Pilot the other night. How ridiculous you have made yourself. See, there's another table up. Bless the man, not there, that's the piquet place.”
Ralph had quietly seated himself next to Major Piccalilli, of the Irregular Cavalry, Cayenne Station, Upper India, and had already disturbed his marking-cards, whereby that gallant officer was reduced to the verge of apoplexy with speechless rage.
“Stay, you shall stick to this one,” continued Walter in a low voice; “that fellow Beamish is hateful to me—and I will cut in yonder. There is not a muff-table in the room—all these beggars play too well.” With these words, the captain hurried away; and as soon as the rubber he had been watching was finished, Derrick was admitted of the conclave, to the exclusion of General Prim, who cursed that circumstance very audibly, and for a man of his advanced years, with considerable emphasis and vigour. Derrick fell as a partner to the lot of the gentleman who had inquired as to his proficiency in the art of asking for trumps.
“If you would only hold your cards a little more on the table, I should be able to see them myself,” remarked Mr Roberts with severity.
“If they look over my hands, sir,” returned Derrick reassuringly, “I'll forgive 'em: that's all.—If you won't take that old gentleman's bets”—referring to the general, who seemed extremely anxious to back their adversaries—“then I will;” and he did it—and luck went with him. There was nothing stronger than champagne to be got at in that respectable place of business, so Ralph kept his head, and won—a hundred and fifty pounds or so. Then, the table breaking up, he rose and stood over his young friend, to see how the cards were going with him.
“Bad,” muttered Derrick to himself, as he watched Walter running through his hand with eager haste, as a woman flirts her fan. His beautiful face was dark with care, his eyes flashed impatiently upon the man whose turn it was to lead.
“Our odds are in fifties, eh, Lisgard?” drawled his right-hand adversary, Captain and Lieutenant Wobegon of the Horse Guards' azure.