"He's a divil!" Maggie declared with conviction. "Mind you, Da, there ain't many that can put the comaudher on me, but Rance Belmont done it once."
Mr. Corbett looked up with interest and waited for her to speak.
"It was about the card-playin'. You know I've never allowed a card in me house since I had a house, and never intended to, but the last day Rance Belmont was here—that was away last spring, when you were away— he begins to play with one of the boys that was in for dinner. Right in there on the sewin'-machine in plain sight of all of us I saw them, and I wiped me hands and tied up me apron, and I walked in, and says I, 'I'll be obliged to you, Mr. Belmont, to put them by,' and I looked at him, stiff as pork. 'Why, certainly, Mrs. Corbett,' says he, smilin' at me as if I had said somethin' pleasant. I felt a little bit ashamed, and went on to sort of explain about bein' brought up in the Army and all that, and he talked so nice about the Army that you would have thought it was old Major Morris come back again from the dead, and pretty soon he had me talkin' away to him and likin' him; and says he, 'I was just going to show Jimmy here a funny trick that can be done with cards, but,' says he, 'if Mrs. Corbett objects I wouldn't offend her for the world!' Now here's the part that scares me, Da—me, Maggie Murphy, that hates cards like I do the divil; says I to him, 'Oh, go on, Mr. Belmont; I don't mind at all!' Now what do you think of that, Da?"
John Corbett sat thinking, but he was not thinking of what Maggie thought he was thinking. He was wondering what trick it was that Rance Belmont had showed Jimmy Peters!
CHAPTER VI.
THE COUNTER-IRRITANT.
When Fred Brydon made the discovery that his two brothers spent a great deal of their time in the pleasant though unprofitable occupation of card-playing with two or three of the other impecunious young men of the neighborhood, he remonstrated with them on this apparent waste of time. When he later discovered that they were becoming so engrossed in the game that they had but little time to plant, sow or reap, or do any of the things incidental to farm life, he became very indignant indeed.
The twins naturally resented any such interference from their farm pupil. They told him that he was there to learn farming, and not to give advice to his elders.
Nearly everyone agrees that card playing is a pleasant and effective way of killing time for people who wait for a long delayed train at a lonely wayside station. This is exactly the position in which the twins found themselves. So, while Aunt Patience, of Bournemouth, tarried and procrastinated, her loving nephews across the sea, thinking of her night and day, waited with as good grace as they could and played the game!
Unlike the twins, Fred Brydon liked hard work, and applied himself with great energy to the work of the farm, determined to disprove his angry father-in-law's words that he would never make a success of anything.