“Bless your heart, Mr. Blyth, none of her relations are alive; or if they are, none of them care about her, poor lamb; I’ll answer for it.”
“I hope in God you are right,” said Valentine, earnestly. “But let us think no more about it now,” he added, resuming his usual manner. “I have asked my regular question, that I can’t help asking whenever I see you; and you have forgiven me, as usual, for putting it; and now I am quite satisfied. Take my arm, Mrs. Peckover: I mean to give the students of my new drawing academy a holiday for the rest of the night, in honor of your arrival. What do you say to devoting the evening in the old way to a game at cards?”
“Just what I was thinking I should like myself as long as it’s only sixpence a game, sir,” said Mrs. Peckover gaily. “I say, young gentleman,” she continued, addressing Zack after Mr. Blyth had left her to look for the cards, “what nonsense are you writing on our darling’s slate that puts her all in a flutter, and makes her blush up to the eyes, when she’s only looking at her poor old Peck? Bless her heart! she’s just as easily amused now as when she was a child. Give us another kiss, my own little love. You understand what I mean, don’t you, though you can’t hear me? Ah, dear, dear! when she stands and looks at me with her eyes like that, she’s the living image of—”
“Cribbage,” cried Mr. Blyth, knocking a triangular board for three players on the table, and regarding Mrs. Peckover with the most reproachful expression that his features could assume.
She felt that the look had been deserved, and approached the card-table rather confusedly, without uttering another word. But for Valentine’s second interruption she would have declared, before young Thorpe, that “little Mary” was the living image of her mother.
“Madonna’s going to play, as usual. Will you make the third, Lavvie?” inquired Valentine, shuffling the cards. “It’s no use asking Zack; he can’t even count yet.”
“No, thank you, dear. I shall have quite enough to do in going on with my book, and trying to keep master Mad-Cap in order while you play,” replied Mrs. Blyth.
The game began. It was a regular custom, whenever Mrs. Peckover came to Mr. Blyth’s house, that cribbage should be played, and that Madonna should take a share in it. This was done, on her part, principally in affectionate remembrance of the old times when she lived under the care of the clown’s wife, and when she had learnt cribbage from Mr. Peckover to amuse her, while the frightful accident which had befallen her in the circus was still a recent event. It was characteristic of the happy peculiarity of her disposition that the days of suffering and affliction, and the after-period of hard tasks in public, with which cards were connected in her case, never seemed to recur to her remembrance painfully when she saw them in later life. The pleasanter associations which belonged to them, and which reminded her of homely kindness that had soothed her in pain, and self-denying affection that had consoled her in sorrow, were the associations instinctively dwelt on by her heart to the exclusion of all others.
To Mrs. Blyth’s great astonishment, Zack, for full ten minutes, required no keeping in order whatever while the rest were playing at cards. It was the most marvelous of human phenomena, but there he certainly was, standing quietly by the fireplace with the drawing in his hand, actually thinking! Mrs. Blyth’s amazement at this unexampled change in his manner so completely overcame her, that she fairly laid down her book to look at him. He noticed the action, and approached the couch directly.
“That’s right,” he said; “don’t read any more. I want to have a serious consultation with you.”