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 stay 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.”
Leonore said, “You get the ideas very nicely, but you hit much too hard. You can’t hit a ball too softly. You pound it as if you were trying to smash it.”
“It’s something I really must learn,” said Peter, who had refused over and over again in the past.
“I’ll teach you, while you are here,” said Leonore.
Peter did not refuse this time.