In a space of time incredibly brief, not a whist-player was left upon the
field: the victorious Losely had trumped out the last; some few whom
Nature had endowed more liberally than Fortune still retained strength
enough to sup--if asked;

"But none who came to sup remained to play."

"Plague on it," said Losely to Poole, as one afternoon they were dividing
the final spoils, "your friends are mightily soon cleaned out: could not
even get up double dummy last night; and we must hit on some new plan for
replenishing the coffers. You have rich relations; can't I help you to
make them more useful?"

Said Dolly Poole, who was looking exceedingly bilious, and had become a
martyr to chronic headache,

"My relations are prigs! Some of them give me the cold shoulder, others
--a great deal of jaw. But as for tin, I might as well scrape a flint
for it. My uncle Sam is more anxious about my sins than the other
codgers, because he is my godfather, and responsible for my sins, I
suppose; and he says he will put me in the way of being respectable.
My head's splitting--"

"Wood does split till it is seasoned," answered Losely. "Good fellow,
uncle Sam! He'll put you in the way of tin; nothing else makes a man
respectable."

"Yes,--so he says; a girl with money--"