The game was so direct and the player so sure.
Several countrymen had won small sums, and one, a charmingly rustic
stranger, with a peculiar accent (he said that him and his goil should now
have a smoot' old time off his winninks--though the lady was not
manifested), had won twenty-five dollars with no trouble at all. The two
operators seemed depressed, declaring the luck against them and the
Plattville people too brilliant at the game.
It was wonderful how the young couples worked their way arm-in-arm through
the thickest crowds, never separating. Even at the lemonade stands they
drank holding the glasses in their outer hands--such are the sacrifices
demanded by etiquette. But, observing the gracious outpouring of fortune
upon the rustic with the rare accent, a youth in a green tie disengaged
his arm--for the first time in two hours--from that of a girl upon whose
finger there shone a ring, sumptuous and golden, and, conducting her to a
corner of the yard, bade her remain there until he returned. He had to
speak to Hartly Bowlder, he explained.
Then he plunged, red-faced and excited, into the circle about the shell
manipulators, and offered, to lay a wager.
"Hol' on there, Hen Fentriss," thickly objected a flushed young man beside
him, "iss my turn."
"I'm first. Hartley," returned the other. "You can hold yer bosses a
minute, I reckon.
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