“So you would thrust my chair out of your room?” said she.
Then, as I made no words on it, Peg after a space would for the second time be about her departure, and I confess, for all my late thirst for her presence, not a trifle to my relief. A leopard—even a leopard named Peg—is no good company.
When Peg was by the door, she swung round on me. “I will not sit there until I choose,” she cried again. “But you shall not touch my chair! I will not have it banished!” With this, she went quite away, while I stayed to look on the chair which had made the trouble, and now from its old place would leer victoriously upon me, and mock with a more insulting emptiness than ever, that doubly vacant heart of mine.
CHAPTER XI—THE GENERAL MAKES PROVERBS
In those few days next to follow Peg's tantrum of the chair, like those several to precede it, I was given no more than meager pictures of her. I should perhaps beg forgiveness for the name “tantrum,” which is a byword or term of slang, but search as I may, I find nothing so good wherewith to tell the story of that rootless wrath of Peg's. However, I may say I was at care not to shift the chair again, but left it to stand waiting for her in accord with her command.
Peg, on the next day after that tantrum, and on every day, would come for her visit with the General; but each time she so crept by me, whether by stealth or luck, that I lost notice of her advent, and knew nothing of her presence until she went past my door when on her way for home. She would create noise enough with her flight; setting her small feet down in emphasis and sending a rustle along the hallway with the swirl of her petticoats, so that I had ample time to raise my head and be on guard for her. She would nod slightly as she caught my glance, but ever sustained herself with that distance which she had seen fit to construct between us.
When Peg flashed by my door—for, radiant as ever, and with the motion of a meteor, “flashed” should be the description of it—I was bound to observe how her look shot straight for her chair like an arrow. She would be sure it was there, that chair; and I could tell how its absence would have become the signal for crowning me with so warm a version of her feelings that I shriveled like October leaves to simply think on it. But I would meet no risk of the sort, since I did not entertain the hardihood to invoke it.
I say the latter, because sooth it is, that half in anger, half in thought to bring her in for a talk, I once had it on my mind to send Peg's chair again into exile. Indeed, I did put it out of the room. But only for a moment; the wick of my courage burned dim, and I fell to be in utmost haste to restore that leathern furnishment, breathing the while in a quick, craven fashion of respiration, lest she surprise me before the situation was repaired. Thus it stood; the chair and I in the room, and both desolate, with Peg going each day by like a watchman on his rounds, to glance in and be assured.