She was so childishly open of her pleasure at this that I did not tell her it was a mere trick of mine; that I had told him to charge when he sprang up.

She knew his eyes so little as to think he displayed regard for rather than respect for my command.

She could not see that he begged me piteously to know _why_ he must crouch there at a couple of strange inconsequential feet and see the good world go suddenly wrong.
Still further, to make those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch.

Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards.

I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might be that I preferred to the society of her mother on her own porch.