“Let’s try again,” he suggested, and cut a second and smaller slice.
Pamela scrambled down from her mother’s lap and approached near to him, leaning with her small sticky hands on his knees, and her greedy blue eyes on the cake.
“Try again!” she repeated delightedly, and held out an eager hand.
“It is just as well,” remarked Pamela the first, “that this doesn’t happen often.”
She met his eyes over the child’s bright head and returned their quiet smile. In making his bid for baby favours he was gaining more than he guessed. Before the second piece of cake was finished, Pamela the second was seated on his knee; and because he was badly beaten this time also, and seemed to mind his defeat even more than before, she rested her head contentedly against his sleeve, and evinced entire satisfaction at his expressions of disappointment. Pamela the second was hard-hearted and crowed loudly over her success.
“I think you may claim to have won this time,” said Pamela the first, watching the child’s friendly response to his overtures with pleased, surprised eyes.
He caught the reference.
“Through another defeat,” he said, “yes.”
“It is a greater victory than you imagine,” she added. “I have never known her won over by your sex before. You are accustomed to children?”
“Not accustomed,—little people don’t come my way; but I’m in sympathy with them. My tastes are infantile, you see.”