had perhaps eaten of her provender, and even behaved with a complaisance which could have led her to hope that some day she might be something to him.  But I knew that he had not persistently faced the peril of being trampled to death by me in his pulpy infancy—­so great his fear of our separation—­to let a mere woman come between us at this day.  And it was well that he should now tell her this in the plainest of words.

The woman seemed to view me with an increased respect from that very moment.  She tried first to bring Jim to her side by a soft call that almost made me tremble for his integrity.  But he did not so much as turn his head.  His eyes were for me alone.  With a rubber shoe flung gallantly over his shoulder, he danced incitingly before me, praying that I would pretend to be crazed by the sight of his prize and seek to wrench it from him.

But I pretended instead to be bored by his importunities, choosing to rub it in.  To her who longed for his friendly notice,—­a little throaty bark, a lift of the paw, perhaps a winsome laying of his head along her lap,—­I affected indifference to his infatuation for me.  I pretended always to have been a perfect devil of a fellow among the dogs, and professed loftily not to have divined the secret of my innumerable and unvarying conquests.

“Dogs are so foolishly faithful,” remarked Miss Lansdale, with polite acerbity.

“I know it,” I conceded; “that fellow thinks I am the most beautiful person in all the world.”

She said “Indeed?” with an inflection and a sweeping glance at me which I found charged with meaning.  But I knew well enough that I had for all time mastered a certain measure of her difficult respect.

“And he’s such a fine dog, too,” she added in a tone intended to convey to me the full extent of her pity for him.

“I have him remarkably well trained,” I said.  “I can often force him to notice people whom I like, especially if they are clever enough to let him see that they like me rather well.”

“It would be almost worth while,” she remarked with a longing look at Jim but none at me.

“Many have found it quite so,” I said, ordering Jim to charge at my feet, “but it’s a great bore, I assure you.”

I needed not to be told that she envied me my power, and so deep and genuine appeared to be her love for him that secretly I hoped he would again be amiable to her during my absence on the morrow.  The contrast of his manner on my return would further chasten her.

From the porch we both watched her move across the little stretch of lawn, and, at my whispered suggestion, Jim rose to his feet and barked her insultingly over the last twenty feet of it.  I was delighted to note that this induced a shamed acceleration of her pace and a tighter clutching of her skirts.  I thought it important to let her know clearly and at once just who was the master in my own house.

CHAPTER XXIV