“Goody!” cried Leonore, giving a little bounce for joy.

“Is it about that famous dinner?” inquired Watts.

“No.”

“Peter, I’m so curious about that.  Will you tell me what you did?”

“I ate a dinner,” said Peter smiling.

“Now don’t be like Mr. Pell,” said Leonore, reprovingly, “or I’ll take back what I just said.”

“Did you roar, and did the tiger put its tail between its legs?” asked Watts.

“That is the last thing our friends, the enemies, have found,” said Peter.

“You will tell me about it, won’t you, Peter?” said Leonore, ingratiatingly.

“Have you a mount for me, Watts, for to-morrow?  Mutineer comes by boat to-night, but won’t be here till noon.”

“Yes.  I’ve one chap up to your weight, I think.”

“I don’t like dodgers,” said Leonore, the corners of her mouth drawn down.

“I was not dodging,” said Peter.  “I only was asking a preliminary question.  If you will get up, before breakfast, and ride with me, I will tell you everything that actually occurred at that dinner.  You will be the only person, I think, who wasn’t there, who knows.”  It was shameful and open bribery, but bosses are shameful and open in their doings, so Peter was only living up to his role.

The temptation was too strong to be resisted, Leonore said, “Of coarse I will,” and the corners of her mouth reversed their position.  But she said to herself:  “I shall have to snub you in something else to make up for it.”  Peter was in for a bad quarter of an hour somewhere.

Leonore had decided just how she was going to treat Peter.  To begin with, she intended to accentuate that “five years” in various ways.  Then she would be very frank and friendly, just as long as he, too, would keep within those limits, but if Peter even verged on anything more, she intended to leave him to himself, just long enough to show him that such remarks as his “not caring to be friends,” brought instant and dire punishment.  “And I shan’t let him speak,” Leonore decided, “no matter if he wants to.  For if he does, I’ll have to say ‘no,’ and then he’ll go back to New York and sulk, and perhaps never come near me again, since he’s so obstinate, while I want to siay friends.”  Many such campaigns have been planned by the party of the first part.  But the trouble is that, usually, the party of the second part also has a plan, which entirely disconcerts the first.  As the darkey remarked:  “Yissah.  My dog he wud a beat, if it hadn’t bin foh de udder dog.”

Peter found as much contrast in his evening, as compared with his morning, as there was in his own years.  After dinner.  Leonore said: 

“I always play billiards with papa.  Will you play too?”

“I don’t know how,” said Peter.

“Then it’s time you learned.  I’ll take you on my side, because papa always beats me.  I’ll teach you.”

So there was the jolliest of hours spent in this way, all of them laughing at Peter’s shots, and at Leonore’s attempts to show him how.  “Every woman ought to play billiards,” Peter thought, when it was ended.  “It’s the most graceful sight I’ve seen in years.”