"It's no use asking Zack; he can't even count yet." "No, thank you, dear.

I shall have quite enough to do in going on with my book, and trying to keep master Mad-Cap in order while you play," replied Mrs.Blyth.
The game began.

It was a regular custom, whenever Mrs.Peckover came to Mr.Blyth's house, that cribbage should be played, and that Madonna should take a share in it.

This was done, on her part, principally in affectionate remembrance of the old times when she lived under the care of the clown's wife, and when she had learnt cribbage from Mr.Peckover to amuse her, while the frightful accident which had befallen her in the circus was still a recent event.

It was characteristic of the happy peculiarity of her disposition that the days of suffering and affliction, and the after-period of hard tasks in public, with which cards were connected in her case, never seemed to recur to her remembrance painfully when she saw them in later life.