in obedience to Miss
Bellew's request, I could not again ask her to dance, I myself felt
little inclination to seek for another partner. The practice of the
place seemed, however, as imperatively to exclude idleness as the
discipline of a man-of-war. If you were not dancing you ought to be
playing cards, making love, drinking negus, or exchanging good stories
with some motherly, fat, old lady, too heavy for a reel, too stupid for
loo. In this dilemma I cut into a round game, which I remember often to
have seen at Rooney's, technically called 'speculation.' A few minutes
before, and I was fancying to myself what my mother would think of all
this; and now, as I drew my chair to the table, I muttered a prayer to
my own heart that she might never hear of my doings. How strange it is
that we would much rather be detected in some overt act of vice than
caught in any ludicrous situation or absurd position! I could look my
friends and family steadily enough in the face while standing amid all
the blacklegs of Epsom and the swindlers of Ascot, exchanging with
them the courtesies of life, and talking on terms of easy and familiar
intercourse; yet would I rather have been seen with the veriest
pickpocket in fashionable life, than seated amid that respectable and
irreproachable party who shook their sides with laughter around the
card-table!

Truly, it was a merry game, and well suited for a novice, as it required
no teaching. Each person had his three cards dealt him, one of which was
displayed to the company in rotation. Did this happen to be a knave or
some other equally reproachful character, the owner was mulcted to the
sum of fivepence; and he must indeed have had a miser's heart who could
regret a penalty so provocative of mirth. Often as the event took
place, the fun never seemed to grow old; and from the exuberance of
the delight, and the unceasing flow of the laughter, I began to wonder
within myself if these same cards had not some secret and symbolic
meaning unknown to the neophyte. But the drollery did not end here:
you might sell your luck and put up your hand to auction. This led to
innumerable droll allusions and dry jokes, and, in fact, if ever a game
was contrived to make one's sides ache, this was it.

A few sedate and sober people there were, who, with bent brow and
pursed-up lip, watched the whole proceeding. They were the secret police
of the card-table; it was in vain to attempt to conceal your luckless
kn