“Well,” I said, when Peg would let me be heard, “I make no secret that I am over happy with this new prospect of your friendship. It was night while I thought you would not forgive me my offence.”
“Say no more of it,” cried Peg, sharply, putting her fingers in her ears. At the same time I caught the milky shine of her leopard teeth. “Say no more, or I shall go back to my anger as a refuge. Speak of something else! Why did you turn my chair out of door?—my poor chair that had done no harm!” Peg caressed the arms of it with her palms as though it were alive and could know and feel her petting. “You did it because you hated me.”
“No, forsooth!” I protested. “Now if I had only hated you it might have stayed till the fall of doom. But I could not bear the leering, mocking look of it, and me deserted; it would seem ever to brew for me a cup of loneliness. And so for that I thrust it from the room.”
“Why, then! and that was it!” cried Peg. “There you see, now, I can be a fool as well as you.”
“But why did you avoid me?” I asked, in my turn. “Surely, even for my dull clumsiness, there was need of no such hard reproof. Come, now, why did you stay away? And why did you run from me when I went across to the square that day to beg a word from you?”
“Because I hated you,” returned Peg, with a self-satisfied air. “I hate you now, watchdog, when I pause and think. You had made me suffer, and I thought to see you suffer in return. And really, watch-dog, you did suffer; and it pleased me much.”
“I had not thought you were made with such a palate for revenge,” said I, a bit stricken with these words of cruelty. “And yet, if it so pleasure you to give me pain, why then, go on.”
“Don't, watch-dog, don't,” returned Peg, in a voice whimsically between crying and laughing. “Only a little more of that and you shall have my tears. But can't you see how your suffering was a most tender compliment? I declare to you that when I would go by your door, the look of grief to weigh upon your brow was better to me than a smile. The mere memory of it would keep my heart warm throughout a winter's day.”
“It must indeed be a topsy-turvy nature,” said I, “that finds its pleasure in the woe of friends.”
“No recriminations, watch-dog,” retorted Petif, in a high vein. “If your dullness have no limits, at the least my patience has. Now where did you go when I avoided you in the square, and you were too much the coward to lift the knocker of my door? Fie! such another fawn-heart does not roam existence! Where did you go, I say?”