On the fourth day, I bethought myself of teaching my companion piquet
(no purely transatlantic game is in the least interesting, if the stakes
are nominal); he acquired it with the ready aptitude that seems natural
to Americans, and I soon had to drop the odds of the deal. We played
many hundred _parties_ for imaginary eagles; eventually I got a run, and
left off a good winner, which, as my opponent had not money enough to
buy tobacco, was highly satisfactory to every one concerned.
After a week's confinement to my room, I was allowed to take half an
hour's exercise daily in a narrow strip of yard just twenty-one paces
long; it was hedged in with kitchens and all sorts of disagreeable
buildings, but the additional space was not to be despised. On the first
evening after this concession, I was pacing up and down moodily (only
inmates of the same room are allowed to descend together, so that you
gain no social advantage), when just over my head, from a window on the
first story, there broke out a burst of merriment, and a
half-intelligible trill of baby-language; then a little round pink face,
under a cloud of fair hair, peered out at me through the bars. The utter
incongruity of the whole picture struck me so absurdly, that, I believe,
I did indulge in a dreary laugh.
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