"I'd hit him again if it
would only make him _speak_!" She pressed the bearded face against her
own. "Speak to me," she whispered; "tell me you forgive me. Tell me you
love me!"
Jimmie opened his eyes and smiled at her.
"You never had to shoot me," he stammered, "to make me tell you _that_."
THE CARD-SHARP
I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be
the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church,
after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding
floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the
waits singing "God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."
To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in
my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of
whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls,
skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them,
sometimes explode.
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