“Yes, I would!  It makes me so tired,” asseverated Mrs. Arty, “to think of the old goats that men put up for candidates when they know they’re solemn old fools!  I’d just like to get out and vote my head off.”

“Well, I think the woman’s place is in the home,” sniffed Miss Proudfoot, decisively, tucking away a doily she was finishing for the Women’s Exchange and jabbing at her bangs.

They settled themselves about the glowing, glancing, glittering, golden-oak center-table.  Miss Proudfoot shuffled sternly.  Mr. Wrenn sat still and frightened, like a shipwrecked professor on a raft with two gamblers and a press-agent, though Nelly was smiling encouragingly at him from the couch where she had started her embroidery—­a large Christmas lamp mat for the wife of the Presbyterian pastor at Upton’s Grove.

“Don’t you wish your little friend Horatio Hood Teddem was here to play with you?” remarked Tom.

“I do not,” declared Mrs. Arty.  “Still, there was one thing about Horatio.  I never had to look up his account to find out how much he owed me.  He stopped calling me, Little Buttercup, when he owed me ten dollars, and he even stopped slamming the front door when he got up to twenty.  O Mr. Wrenn, did I ever tell you about the time I asked him if he wanted to have Annie sweep—­”

“Gerty!” protested Miss Proudfoot, while Nelly, on the couch, ejaculated mechanically, “That story!” but Mrs. Arty chuckled fatly, and continued: 

“I asked him if he wanted me to have Annie sweep his nightshirt when she swept his room.  He changed it next day.”

“Your bid, Mr. Poppins, “said Miss Proudfoot, severely.

“First, I want to tell Wrenn how to play.  You see, Wrenn, here’s the schedule.  We play Avondale Schedule, you know.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Wrenn, timorously....  He had once heard of Carbondale—­in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or somewhere—­but that didn’t seem to help much.

“Well, you see, you either make or go back,” continued Tom.  “Plus and minus, you know.  Joker is high, then right bower, left, and ace.  Then—­uh—­let’s see; high bid takes the cat—­widdie, you know—­and discards.  Ten tricks.  Follow suit like whist, of course.  I guess that’s all—­that ought to give you the hang of it, anyway.  I bid six on no trump.”

As Tom Poppins finished these instructions, given in the card-player’s rapid don’t-ask-me-any-more-fool-questions manner, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was choking.  He craned up his neck, trying to ease his stiff collar.  So, then, he was a failure, a social outcast already.

So, then, he couldn’t learn Five Hundred!  And he had been very proud of knowing one card from another perfectly, having played a number of games of two-handed poker with Tim on the cattle-boat.  But what the dickens did “left—­cat—­follow suit” mean?

And to fail with Nelly watching him!  He pulled at his collar again.