“But is she?” persisted Carlotta.

“I wish to heaven she was,” I laughed, imprudently, “for then she would not come and spoil my morning’s work.”

“Oh, she wants to marry you,” said Carlotta.

“Miss Griggs,” said I, “Carlotta will resume her studies,” and I went upstairs, sighing for the beautiful tower with a lift outside.

July 14th.

Pasquale came in about nine o’clock, and found us playing cards.

He is a bird of passage with no fixed abode.  Some weeks ago he gave up his chambers in St. James’s, and went to live with an actor friend, a grass-widower, who has a house in the St. John’s Wood Road close by.  Why Pasquale, who loves the palpitating centres of existence, should choose to rusticate in this semi-arcadian district, I cannot imagine.  He says he can think better in St. John’s Wood.

Pasquale think!  As well might a salmon declare it could sing better in a pond!  The consequence of his propinquity, however, has been that he has dropped in several times lately on his way home, but generally at a later hour.

“Oh, please don’t move and spoil the picture,” he cried.  “Oh, you idyllic pair!  And what are you playing?  Cribbage!  If I had been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your after-dinner entertainment, I should have sworn to cribbage!”

“An excellent game,” said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I remember.  I dislike cards.  They bore me to death.  So dus chess.  People love to call them intellectual pastimes; but, surely, if a man wants exercise for his intellect, there are enough problems in this complicated universe for him to worry his brains over, with more profit to himself and the world.  And as for the pastime—­I consider that when two or more intelligent people sit down to play cards they are insulting one another’s powers of conversation.  These remarks do not apply to my game with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused.  She has picked up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this is only the third evening we have played, she was getting the better of me when Pasquale appeared.

I repeated my statement.  Cribbage certainly was an excellent game.  Pasquale laughed.

“Of course it is.  A venerable pastime.  Darby and Joan have played it of evenings for the last thousand years.  Please go on.”

But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.

“He says such funny things.”

Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that is never far from her side.  How lithe her movements are!

“Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a big stick,” she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale helped himself to a sweet.

He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta’s hand and the contents rolled upon the floor.  They both went on hands and knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering.