After dinner we played Bridge. "I disapprove of the game myself," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met, "but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the evening."
Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they played as partners together, with me and the American widow as opponents. Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger, which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of way. He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber. "Now we'll see where old Mossy Face is. I think that draws the Curse of Scotland. Kinky takes that," and so on. It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs. Fielden seemed quite pleased. I don't suppose she ever feels irritated. The American widow, who was my partner, was only just learning the game. When I said to her, "May I play?" she always replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not." And when it was pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do it whether I like it or not." She always gave us such items of information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand, because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means "diamonds," but it is quite useless. She also says (with a radiant smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the word. When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any one's deal?" And then we laugh and stop arguing. She never keeps the score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything useful.
The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing, and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up vigorously all the time. This necessitated a number of questions relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick? What's trumps? Does my hand go down on the table this time?" Mrs. Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff fingers.