What's it to be, Scarborough?"
"Pounds and fives. I shan't play higher than that." There came across
Mountjoy's mind, as he stated the stakes for which he consented to play,
a remembrance that in the old days he had always been called Captain
Scarborough by this man who now left out the captain. Of course he had
fallen since that,--fallen very low. He ought to feel obliged to any man,
who had in the old days been a member of the same club with him, who
would now greet him with the familiarity of his unadorned name. But the
remembrance of the old sounds came back upon his ear; and the
consciousness that, before his father's treatment of him, he had been
known to the world at large as Captain Scarborough, of Tretton.
"Well, well; pounds and fives," said Vignolles. "It's better than
pottering away at ecarte at a pound a game. Of course a man could win
something if the games were to run all one way; but where they alternate
so quickly it amounts to nothing. You've got the first dummy,
Scarborough. Where will you sit? Which cards will you take? I do believe
that at whist everything depends upon the cards,--or else on the hinges.
I've known eleven rubbers running to follow the hinges. People laugh at
me because I believe in luck.
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