I took her queen. She protested it was unfair.
I offered to restore it to her; she would not have it at any price;—she wished me to play the game, she said, just as if I were playing with a man.
I checkmated her. She got up in a pet, saying that chess was a nasty, stupid, tiresome thing, and that she would not play it any longer.
O, the contrariness of feminine nature!
Other people now began to drop in; and it was my turn to get put out.
I heard it was Min’s birthday, which I had not known before. I saw that they remembered it; while, I, had not brought her even a paltry flower!
Everybody was wishing her “many happy returns of the day.” I had not done so; neither had I any opportunity of atoning for my neglect, as she was too busy receiving the new comers; but, indeed, I would have been too proud to excuse myself after witnessing Mr Mawley’s “effusion.”
He seemed to me to be guilty of unpardonable effrontery in holding Min’s hand such an unconscionably long time in his, when presenting a miserable shop-bouquet; and, as for the lackadaisical airs of that insufferable donkey, Horner—I can find no words adequate wherewith to express what I thought; he was positively sickening!
I did not have another chance of speaking to Min either; that is, unless I chose to bawl what I had to say across a crowded room; and, I need hardly say, I did not exactly care about that!
She appeared to me to be very inconsistent, too.