“Where is Potapitch?” she continued. “Send Potapitch to speak to him. No, you must tell him, you must tell him,”—here she nudged me again—“for I have not the least notion where Potapitch is. Sortez, sortez ,” she shouted to the young man, until I leant over in her direction and whispered in her ear that no shouting was allowed, nor even loud speaking, since to do so disturbed the calculations of the players, and might lead to our being ejected.
“How provoking!” she retorted. “Then the young man is done for! I suppose he wishes to be ruined. Yet I could not bear to see him have to return it all. What a fool the fellow is!” and the old lady turned sharply away.
On the left, among the players at the other half of the table, a young lady was playing, with, beside her, a dwarf. Who the dwarf may have been—whether a relative or a person whom she took with her to act as a foil—I do not know; but I had noticed her there on previous occasions, since,