Alice Langham, on her return from Mrs. Porter's dinner, found him
in his study engaged with a game of solitaire, while Hope was
kneeling on a chair beside him with her elbows on the table.
Mr. Langham had been troubled with insomnia of late, and so it
often happened that when Alice returned from a ball she would
find him sitting with a novel, or his game of solitaire, and
Hope, who had crept downstairs from her bed, dozing in front of
the open fire and keeping him silent company. The father and the
younger daughter were very close to one another, and had grown
especially so since his wife had died and his son and heir had
gone to college. This fourth member of the family was a great
bond of sympathy and interest between them, and his triumphs and
escapades at Yale were the chief subjects of their conversation.
It was told by the directors of a great Western railroad, who had
come to New York to discuss an important question with Mr.
Langham, that they had been ushered downstairs one night into his
basement, where they had found the President of the Board and his
daughter Hope working out a game of football on the billiard
table. They had chalked it off into what corresponded to five-
yard lines, and they were hurling twenty-two chess-men across it
in ``flying wedges'' and practising the several tricks which
young Langham had intrusted to his sister under an oath of
secrecy. The sight filled the directors with the horrible fear
that business troubles had turned the President's mind, but
after they had sat for half an hour perched on the high chairs
around the table, while Hope excitedly explained the game to
them, they decided that he was wiser than they knew, and each
left the house regretting he had no son worthy enough to bring
``that young girl'' into the Far West.