"Get Mrs. Wood," Hertha made answer, "you know I can't play."
"Neither can she," Dick replied cheerfully, "but she don't know it. However, she won't," he added, "we've asked her."
Hertha looked at the page of wavering marks and hesitated.
"Oh, come along," Dick pleaded. "Do it 'to oblige Benson.' Mrs. Pickens has left a bunch of southern newspapers, just come in, to amuse us, but she wants you."
It was a standing joke in the household, the love its landlady bore for local southern news. A corner of her room was stacked with such weeklies as "The Cherokee Advocate," "The Talapoosie Ladies' Messenger," over which she would pore, reading the births and deaths, the marriages and divorces, the lawsuits and business tribulations, the receptions and engagements of the southern world as though each community were her own. "They're my novels," she would retort when Dick jeered at her fondness for these local sheets. Hertha appreciated her unselfishness in joining the game, and, obeying an impulse to have a good time, flung down her textbook, picked up her box of candy and, accompanied by Dick, went downstairs.
The young man was elated. At Hertha's request he placed the candy in the center of the table and seized upon her as his partner without permitting the question to be decided by cutting the cards. For this Hertha was grateful, since she knew little of the game and was confident that she would spoil the good time of either of the women should they have to bear her mistakes upon their score. Of Miss Wood she stood much in awe. That lady was an assistant secretary in an Association for Improving the Condition of the Destitute and knew a prodigious amount regarding poverty and crime. She played her cards as though solving one of her, day's cases. Mrs. Pickens had played to oblige too often to have any feeling of the importance of the game. To Dick, cards were a matter of luck; his failures were always attributed to poor hands, and with Hertha opposite him he cared little whether he ended in a pit of defeat or on a pinnacle of success.
"I wish you wouldn't talk so much about above and below the line," Hertha said, as they started upon a new rubber.
"Why?" Mrs. Pickens asked.
"Because it's in shorthand, and I want to forget the old stuff. All the sense of a sentence depends upon whether you're above or below."
"It's much the same in bridge," Mrs. Pickens made answer. "Now don't make it, Dick, unless you have the cards."