play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table.
One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said,
that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from
her heart and soul; and would not, save upon a striking emergency,
willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a
thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave,
no concessions. She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor
ever passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost
forfeiture. She fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She held not her
good sword (her cards) "like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; and
neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All people
have their blind side--their superstitions; and I have heard her
declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit.

I never in my life--and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of
it--saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play; or
snuff a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it
was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous
conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed,
cards were cards: and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine
last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand;
and who, in his excess of candour, declared, that he thought there was
no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies,
in recreations of that kind! She could not bear to have her noble
occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that
light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the
world to do,--and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards--over a