She surrendered, I believe, on a day when she had thought to lure Jim into her boat,—fatuously, for was I not a distinguishable figure in the landscape? Her hopes must have been high, for she had but lately repleted him with chicken-bones divinely crunchable, and then bestowed upon him a charlotte russe, an unnatural taste for which she had succeeded in teaching him.
With something of a swagger,—she swaggered in a rather starchy white dress that day, and under a garden hat of broad rim,—she had enticed him to the water's edge, so that I must have been nervous but for knowing the dog through and through.
Her failure was so crushing, so swift, so entire, that for an instant I almost failed to rejoice in her open humiliation. Seated in the boat, oars poised, she invited Jim with soft speech and a smile that might have moved an iron dog without occasioning any remark from me; but Jim, noting, with one paw already in the boat, that I was not to be of the party, turned quickly from her and came to me with his head down. His informing and well-feathered tail signalled to Miss Lansdale that she seemed to have forgotten herself.
At that moment, I think, the woman abandoned all her preposterous hopes; then, too, I think, she learned the last and bitterest lesson which great fighters must learn, to embellish defeat with an air of urbane acceptance. Miss Lansdale relaxed—she melted before my eyes to an aspect that no victor who knew his business could afford to despise.
I clambered in. Jim followed, remarking amiably to the woman as he passed her on his way to the bow of the boat, "I thought you couldn't have meant that!"
And Defeat rowed Jim and me; rowed us past the feathered marge of green islands quite as if nothing had happened. But I knew it had happened, for Miss Lansdale was so nearly human that I presently found myself thinking "Miss Kate" of her. She not only answered questions, but, what amazed me far more, she condescended to ask them now and then. To an observer we might have seemed to be holding speech of an actual friendliness—speech of the water and the day; of herself and the dog and a little of me.
At length, as I caught an overhanging willow to rest her arms a moment, I felt bold enough to venture words about this assumption of amity which was so becoming in her. I even confessed that she was reminding me of certain distinguished but truly amiable personages who are commonly to be found in the side-show adjacent to the main tent. "Particularly of the wild man," I said, to be more specific, for my listener seemed at once to crave details.
"There is a powerfully painted banner swelling in the breeze outside, you know. It shows the wild man in all his untamed ferocity, in his native jungle, armed with a simple but rather promising club. A dozen intrepid tars from a British man-of-war—to be seen in the offing—are in the act of casting a net over him. It's an exciting picture, I assure you, Miss Lansdale. The net looks flimsy, and the wild person is not only enraged but very muscular—"
"I fail to see," she interrupted, with a slight lapse into what I may call her first, or Lansdale, manner.
"Of course you fail! You have to go inside to see," I explained kindly. "But it only costs a dime, which is little enough—the hired enthusiast, indeed, stationed just outside the entrance, reminds us over and over again that it is only 'the tenth part of a dollar,' and he sometimes adds that 'it will neither make nor break nor set a man up in business.' He is a flagrant optimist in small money matters, ever looking on the bright side."