"Certainly," he answered reassuringly.
"Well, then?" she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this interrogation was apparently to her the final victorious argument.
At his discomfiture Hawker grinned.
"You haven't asked news of Stanley," he said. "Why don't you ask news of Stanley?"
"Oh! and how was he?"
"The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture—the pasture, you know—wagging his tail in blissful anticipation of an invitation to come with me, and when it finally dawned upon him that he was not to receive it, he turned and went back toward the house 'like a man suddenly stricken with age,' as the story-tellers eloquently say. Poor old dog!"
"And you left him?" she said reproachfully. Then she asked, "Do you remember how he amused you playing with the ants at the falls?"
"Why, he did. He pawed at the moss, and you sat there laughing. I remember it distinctly."
"You remember distinctly? Why, I thought—well, your back was turned, you know. Your gaze was fixed upon something before you, and you were utterly lost to the rest of the world. You could not have known if Stanley pawed the moss and I laughed. So, you see, you are mistaken. As a matter of fact, I utterly deny that Stanley pawed the moss or that I laughed, or that any ants appeared at the falls at all."