Paula the Tiger was now considering cognate matters with appropriate gravity. “I think I'd rather have you live in the cloud,” she decided. “Angels live in clouds. If you 're an angel, you won't fall and get killed,” she continued, finding a kindly refuge in theology. “I'd rather have you an angel.”
“All right. I'll be an angel,” he agreed. “Nurse doesn't let me play with little boys and girls. Maybe she wouldn't let me play with an angel either. I think you'd better come when nurse isn't here. When will you come again, Angel?”
“To-morrow.”
“Must I give back the nice gum?” she asked anxiously.
“No. But you'd better leave it in your cage. Grown-ups don't like gum around,” he instructed her with precocious worldly wisdom.
“Thank you, Angel. Good-bye, Angel”
“Good-bye, little girl.”
“Gr-rr-rr-rr!” The growl was a savage reminder of the dramatic proprieties.
Carlo was quick of apprehension. “Good-bye, Tiger,” he amended. And the Tiger purred.
Often thereafter I saw them, at the hour when the banded nurse took her outing, playing together on opposite sides of the barrier. Many, various, and ingenious were the diversions which Carlo the free found to amuse the captivity of Paula the caged. There were delightful things to be contrived out of knotted strings, in which Carlo was of incomparable skill. He invented a game of marbles which could be played by opponents on different sides of a twelve-foot steel mesh; an abstruse pastime, but apparently interesting, since it developed into an almost daily contest in which, to judge from the joyous prancings about the cage at the conclusion, she was invariably allowed to win. Also, there were gifts of candy shared, and the delights of the chase with a bean-shooter for weapon and the indignant sparrows for quarry, and instructions in the principles of kinetic stasis as exemplified by the rotary or spinning top. All of which was doubtless very wicked and deceitful and clandestine, and, being so, should have been stopped by a word from me before disaster could come. For, any day, Carlo might slip from that swaying rope and break his precious neck. Or the Varicks might learn of what was going on above their heads, and banish the little Tiger from her happy cage, or perhaps even wholly from the contaminated atmosphere of Our Square. This last would have been a blow to me, for she also was my pupil, and a profitable one, since her father, Putnam Varick, a dry, snuffy, stern, lethargic, ill-natured, liverish man, paid me liberally to come five times a week and give her a grounding in Latin and French. But I could not find it in my heart to deprive my little Paula of her one taste of real childhood.