didn’t talk about Andrew any more often than she talked about the other boys. Henry was in New York City, working on Wall Street; Thomas was in Texas; and Daniel was in England. Mrs. Early talked about their wanderings as if they were customary and entertaining, as if the strangest one among them was John, married and working in a bank in town. She did not have a habit that others did (Beatrice, for example) of topping some other lady’s anecdote with something more impressive of her own, though they all knew she could have. She saved her competitive streak for the poker table.
Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens sat at different tables. Every hand was five cards, and at first the ladies continued to chat while the hands were dealt and they were arranging their cards. Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens chatted along with the rest of them, complimenting the cakes, or discussing the first strawberries, or comparing knitting patterns, but Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens never picked up their cards as soon as they were dealt. They glanced about while the rest of the ladies were scanning what they had, then they picked up their cards, looked at them, and laid them down again, still genial. The betting rounds proceeded with lots of laughter and talk, as if each betting decision was a daring choice, and, indeed, it did seem to the other ladies to be so. Mrs. Early would urge them to be a little more bold—“Raise her two, Mrs. Landon. I’m sure you can stand it!” or “Surely, Miss Mayfield, you needn’t fold just yet.” Her voice was so friendly that Margaret felt as though Mrs. Early was helping her along, that she had Margaret’s interests foremost in her mind. But Margaret never followed her advice, though some of the other ladies did. These ladies did not always come to grief, but often enough they did. Margaret understood Mrs. Early’s purpose—to plump the pot a little before laying claim to it. At the other table, Mrs. Hitchens was doing the same thing, though in a different way—“I’m not sure I would lose hope, dear,” or “It’s so nice when the wagering is confident and straightforward.” The stakes were low, but toward the end of the afternoon, after the losing players had dropped out, the value of the chips would metamorphose—nickel chips would be worth two bits, dime chips worth half a dollar, and two-bit chips worth a dollar. When the winning ladies consolidated at a single table, Mrs. Hitchens dropped out with a smile and an “Oh, I am a bit tired after all.”
Mrs. Early’s eyes were cheerful. Margaret never saw her scowl or lose her smile, nor did she fidget or sigh or touch her hair or move her shoulders, as many of the ladies did without seeming to know what they were doing. They all thought that their friends didn’t actually mean to take their money, but Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens did mean to take their money. They preferred it when the ladies all had to show their hands, and in order to promote this, Mrs. Early introduced high-low, in which both the high hand and the low hand split the pot. Once they started playing in this way, it seemed more fair and more fun, but Margaret saw that Mrs. Early also won more money. And she won more often at stud-horse poker than at draw poker. After a while, Margaret got wise to the fact that Mrs. Early was counting the cards, and that she never forgot that if there were three kings faceup on the table, the likelihood of her completing her flush was minimal. When they played draw poker, she paid close attention to how many cards each of them asked for, as if this told her something, as, indeed, it did. She and Mrs. Hitchens also liked to play vingt-et-un, and Margaret soon came to understand that Mrs. Early was keeping track of the cards that were laid.
One day that summer, when Margaret was sitting beside her at the table, Mrs. Early had just cut the cards. When she took the deck in her hand, she said, “There’s a card missing.” The missing card was under Mrs. Johnson’s chair. This incident passed without remark, but to Margaret, the idea that a woman could be so familiar with the size and weight of a deck of cards that she would sense that a single card was missing was remarkable.
Lavinia had