He smiled in a dignified manner, and spread himself a bit.
Margaret was relieved that, before he could offer the girl a copy, Mrs. Roberts, on the other side of Andrew, gave a squeak that drew his attention. Mrs. Roberts was a retiring soul who played without any strategy at all, and her stack of chips was already noticeably smaller than everyone else’s. Andrew glanced at her, and must have seen her hole card, because when she took a hit and was busted, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. She turned and said, “I don’t know a thing about that, but you may show me, if you would like.”
He sat with them then for about two hours, whispering first to one lady and then to another and another, until they stopped for tea, when he put on his hat and went out.
That night, over supper, he said, “Your lady friends have a deplorable feel for strategy. I wonder if Mrs. Roberts even knows that there are fifty-two cards in the deck.”
“Possibly not. She only comes for the gossip.”
“She is being robbed blind.”
“Andrew, if she loses two dollars, it’s a bad day. The stakes are low. Think of it as the price she has to pay for an afternoon’s sociability.”
“When are these ladies coming again?”
“They agreed on Monday.” She saw that it was inevitable, but also that it kept him off the streets. That part was a relief.
On Monday morning, he put a leaf in the table, and over the course of the next few weeks, he installed himself as their tutor. His method was to help first one lady and then another with basic strategy. After that, he told them a bit about card counting, and then the higher mathematics of probability. He pitted the ladies against one another. Mrs. Roberts stopped losing all the time, and Miss Jones began losing a little more often. Margaret saw, possibly for the first time, just the palest shadow of Mrs. Early in the son who was now older than his mother had ever been. She was not as uncomfortable as she had expected to be—it was interesting to see him in the midst of so many ladies. He had a manner, stiff but gallant, right out of 1895.
In these games, Andrew never expounded upon any of his theories about the universe or the Panay, nor did he talk much in general—he was too busy whispering to his designated pupil to hold forth to the rest of them. Margaret felt fond of him, in a distant way.
Having succeeded with the cards, and still mindful of Mrs. Wareham’s urging, she furnished him with a dog. Andrew was not opposed to a dog. For her, the idea of owning a dog had died with Alexander—at first it seemed like too much of a substitute child, and then it became a habit they had not developed. But one day she went to the pound, and she adopted Stella, whose previous owner had been transferred by the navy to South America. The animal was a terrier mix, housebroken. She walked nicely on a leash, and did not jump onto the furniture unless invited. Margaret was in the kitchen with the dog when Andrew came in. Stella walked over to him, sat down in front of him, and looked up into his face. Margaret said, “Her name is Stella.”
He said, “Is it, indeed?” Of course her name was Stella—no other dog could be adopted by an astronomer. That evening, he invited Stella onto the sofa, and she sat quietly while he petted her on the head. That night, he made a bed for her in the corner of his bedroom by folding an old quilt, and the first thing Margaret heard in the morning, before she was quite awake and when it was still very gloomy with fog and darkness, was the sound of the kitchen door opening and closing. She sat up and went to the window. Down below, in the backyard, she could just make out Andrew, with Stella at his heels, opening the back gate and heading out for a walk.
Such a charming, bright-eyed, and well-behaved dog imparted her own respectability to Andrew. It was the perfect solution—he walked all over town and people engaged him in conversation, about Stella or about dogs in general. In his usual fashion, he exerted himself, and in short order, he had taught Stella to shake hands, sit up on her hind legs, roll over, jump a stick,