“Rummily enough,” said Freddie, “I was saying just before you came in that I had half a mind to pop over. Only it’s rather a bally fag, starting. Getting your luggage packed and all that sort of thing.”
Nelly, whose luggage consisted of one small trunk, heaved a silent sigh. Mingling with the idle rich carried its penalties.
“America,” said Uncle Chris, “taught me poker, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. Also an exotic pastime styled Craps,—or, alternatively, ‘rolling the bones’—which in those days was a very present help in time of trouble. At Craps, I fear, my hand in late years had lost much of its cunning. I have had little opportunity of practising. But as a young man I was no mean exponent of the art. Let me see,” said Uncle Chris meditatively. “What was the precise ritual? Ah! I have it, ‘Come, little seven!’”
“‘Come, eleven!’” exclaimed Nelly excitedly.
“‘Baby …’ I feel convinced that in some manner the word baby entered into it.”
“‘Baby needs new shoes!’”
“‘Baby needs new shoes!’ Precisely!”
“It sounds to me,” said Freddie, “dashed silly.”
“Oh, no!” cried Nelly reproachfully.
“Well, what I mean to say is, there’s no sense in it, don’t you know.”