hands clasped over a knee she rocked to and fro in her
chair. Gertie discovered that to her friend had just come the
terrifying thought that no one loved her, nobody cared for her, and for
all practical purposes Miss Radford might as well be dead and buried,
with daisies growing over her grave. Gertie argued against this
melancholy attitude, and the other explained that it came to her only
at moments when every one else was jolly and cheerful, adding defiantly
that she could not avoid it, and did not mean to avoid it.

"People," declared Miss Radford with truculence, "have to take me as
they happen to find me!"

Bulpert's second friend, advancing with a pack of cards, asked if Miss
Radford would kindly select one and tell him the description. "The
Queen of Hearts? Nothing," said Bulpert's second friend, with a
gallant bow, "nothing could be more appropriate." Miss Radford cried,
"Oh, what a cheeky thing to say!" and at once bade farewell to
melancholy.

A wonderful man, the second friend--able to do everything with cards
that ordinary folk deemed impossible. If you selected a card and tore
it up; and he presently--talking all the while--produced a card, and
said in the politest way, "I think that is yours, madam?" and you
remarked that this was the four of clubs, whereas you selected the
five, he exclaimed, with pretence of irritation, "Well, what is there
to grumble at?" and, looking again, you saw that it had changed to the
five of clubs. There was nothing to do but to applaud and wonder. He
swallowed cards, and produced them with a slight click from his elbow,
the middle of his back, and his ankle. He allowed Miss Loriner to find
the four aces and put them at the bottom of the pack, and the next
moment asked Mr. Trew, who had just arrived, to produce them from the
inside pocket of his coat. Mr. Trew had some difficulty in finding
them, but the conjurer assisted, and there were the four aces; and Mr.
Trew, after denying the suggestion that he had come prepared to play
whist, admitted the young man was a masterpiece. Mr. Trew's watch was
next borrowed and wrapped in paper; the poker borrowed in order to
smash it; the violent blow given. Miss Radford was asked to be so very
kind as to assist by looking in the plate of nuts that stood on the
table, and there the watch was discovered, safe and sound. Some
thought-reading followed, not easy to understand because of the
incessant monologue kept up by the gi