d the one-eyed man is king. There is my Mother-in-law for
instance, now I really enjoy a rubber with _her_. We sit down after
dinner at a table scant of cloth, and either much too small or so
inconveniently large that I cannot see the trump at the other end of
it. She usually begins operations by misdealing, which is precisely
what always happens to me with a new pack; nor do I yet understand
how it is that the expert manages to deal at about sixty miles an hour
without a mistake, whereas when my turn comes every other card seems
to get stuck to its neighbour by a very superior kind of glue, so that
they all come out in batches of twos and threes as it were, instead of
one by one.

But when the deal has come right, her next step is to sort her cards,
which she does by placing all her trumps apart from the others between
her third and fourth fingers; I can thus tell how many she has, and am
further assisted by her generally dropping one or two in the process
face upwards on the table. This would be punishable at the Club; but
as she would consider it "mean" were any allusions made to it, nothing
happens. Towards the end of the hand her attention is apt to wander,
and owing to her abstraction play comes to a dead halt. When a hint
is offered that we are waiting for her, with prompt and business-like
alacrity but regardless of the rigorous formula, "Place your cards,
please," she will say, "Who led a spade?" there being at the time a
club, a heart, and a diamond on the table. Then, being the only one
who has a card of the leader's suit left, she revokes but is not found
out. When she leads out of turn, as happens on an average four or
five times every rubber, if I am against her, I call a suit from her
partner, upon which she says, flaring up, "Is _that_ the way you play
at the Club? 'Cheats never thrive.'" Nor do we, for the simple reason,
that she seldom holds less than three honours in each suit, and from
five to six trumps besides!

This, as I said, is the sort of Whist I rather enjoy; but when it
comes to playing in sober earnest at the Club, there is a different
tale to tell.

(_This different tale will be told in the Duffer's next._)

* * * * *

"AIRY FAIRY LILLY UN!"--One day last week, MR. W.S. LILLY--i.e.
W. "SHIBBOLETHS" LILLY--delivered an excellent lecture on the
Papal-Italian question, and although at Birmingham, it was by no means
a brummagem discourse. But to quote the i