"
Miss Lady looked up in pleased surprise.
"That settles it, Connie," she said; "you girls can play for
yourselves. Come on and go to bed, Kiddie," and with Bertie at her
heels, the new mistress of Queerington raced down the hall.
For ten years Doctor Queerington and Mr. Gooch had played pinochle
every Friday evening. The Doctor did not especially enjoy it, except
as one of those incidents that grows acceptable by long repetition. He
was a born routinist, regarding a well-regulated world as a place
where everything ran in the same grooves to eternity. One of his chief
sources of satisfaction in regard to his second marriage was that it
promised not to interfere with those established laws which regulated
his day, from the prompt breakfast at 7:15 to the long hours with his
books in the evening. In short, Doctor Queerington was a sort of well-
regulated human clock, announcing his opinions as irrevocably as the
striker announces the hours, and ticking along so monotonously between
times that one almost forgot he was there.
If the Friday evening game was to him merely a habit, to Mr. Gooch it
was an occasion. Having once seated himself, and glanced around to
make sure his hand was not reflected in a mirror, he spread his cards
gingerly in his palm with only the corners visible, squared his jaw
and proceeded with solemnity to observe the full rigor of the game.
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