"Well, there won't be any drafts this time," said I. "Just you sit down here, and we'll have a game of marbles—ever play marbles with your father?"
"No, sir," he replied. "He's always too busy, and neither of my nurses has ever known how."
"But your mother comes up here and plays games with you sometimes, doesn't she?" I asked.
"Mother is busy, too," said the child. "Besides, she wouldn't care for a game which you had to sit on the floor to—"
I sprang to my feet and lifted him bodily in my arms, and, after squatting him over by the fireplace where if there were any drafts at all they would be as harmless as a summer breeze, I took up a similar position on the other side of the room, and initiated him into the mystery of miggles as well as I could, considering that all his marbles were real agates.
"You don't happen to have a china-alley anywhere, do you?" I asked.
"No, sir," he answered. "We only have china plates—"
"Never mind," I interrupted. "We can get along very nicely with these."
And then for half an hour, despite the rich quality of our paraphernalia, that little boy and I indulged in a glorious game of real plebeian miggs, and it was a joy to see how quickly his stiff little fingers relaxed and adapted themselves to the uses of his eye, which was as accurate as it was deeply blue. So expert did he become that in a short while he had completely cleaned me out, giving joyous little cries of delight with every hit, and then we turned our attention to the soldiers.
"I want some playing now," he said gleefully, as I informed him that he had beaten me out of my boots at one of my best games. "Show me what you were doing with those soldiers when I came in."