Then the single-o come.  She says: 

“Oh, dear!  It seems that, even with the higher consciousness, one can’t be always certain of one’s numbers at this dreadful game.”

And while she was further reproaching her husband, taking time to do it good and keeping one very damp dollar safe in her hand, what comes up but old 33 again!

It looked like hysterics then, especially when she noticed Buck Devine helping pile Sandy’s chips up in front of him till they looked like a great old English castle, with towers and minarets, and so on, Sandy having played his hunch strong and steady.  She waited for another turn that come nothing important to any of ’em; then she drew Leonard out and made him take her for a glass of lemonade out where Aggie Tuttle was being Rebekkah at the Well, because they charged two bits for it at the bar and Aggie’s was only a dime.  The sale made forty cents Aggie had took in on the evening.

Racing back to Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne, she gets another hard blow; for Sandy has not only win another of his magic numbers but has bought up the bar for the evening, inviting all hands to brim a cup at his expense, whenever they crave it—­nobody’s money good but his; so Cora is not only out what she would of made by following his play but the ten cents cash she has paid Aggie Tuttle.  She was not a woman to be trifled with then.  She took another lemonade because it was free, and made Len take one that he didn’t want.  Then she draws three dollars from him and covers the three numbers with reckless and noble sweeps of her powerful arms.  The game was on again.

Cousin Egbert by now was looking slightly disturbed, or outre, as the French put it, but tries to conceal same under an air of sparkling gayety, laughing freely at every little thing in a girlish or painful manner.

“Yes,” says he coquettishly; “that Sandy scoundrel is taking it fast out of one pocket, but he’s putting it right back into the other.  The wheel’s loss is the bar’s gain.”

I looked over to size Sandy’s chips and I could see four or five markers that go a hundred apiece.

“I admire your roguish manner that don’t fool any one,” I says; “but if we was to drink the half of Sandy’s winnings, even at your robber prices, we’d all be submerged to the periscope.  It looks to me,” I goes on, “like the bazaar-robbing genius is not exclusively a male attribute or tendency.”

“How many of them knitted crawdabs you sold out there at your booths?” he demands.  “Not enough to buy a single Belgian a T-bone steak and fried potatoes.”

“Is that so, indeed?” I says.  “Excuse me a minute.  Standing here in the blinding light of your triumph, I forgot a little matter of detail such as our sex is always wasting its energies on.”

So I call Sandy and Buck away from their Belgian atrocities and speak sharply to ’em.

“You boys ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” I says—­“winning all that money and then acting like old Gaspard the Miser in the Chimes of Normandy!  Can’t you forget your natural avarice and loosen up some?”