It won't be like having her alone with you," she said, with the cordial grin in which she sometimes indulged, "but you will have her opposite to you for an hour, and that will be something." Lawrence approved heartily of the whist party, and assured Mrs Keswick that she was his guardian angel.
"Not much of that," she said, "but I have been told often enough that I'm a regular old matchmaker, and I expect I am." "If you make this match," said Lawrence, "you will have my eternal gratitude." The supper sent out to Lawrence was a very good one, and the anticipation of what was to follow made him enjoy it still more, for his passion had now reached such a point that even to look at his love, although he could only speak to her of trumps and of tricks, would be a refreshing solace which would go down deep into his thirsty soul.
But bedtime and old Isham came, and the whist players came not.

It needed no one to tell Lawrence whose disinclination it was that had prevented their coming.
"I reckon," said Uncle Isham, as he looked in at Letty's cabin on his way to his own, "dat dat ar Mister Crof' aint much use to gittin' hisse'f hurt.

All de time I was helpin' him to go to bed he was a growlin' like de bery debbil.".