"The wild gazelle with the silvery feet I’ll give thee for a playmate sweet." And after Grandfather went away the wild gazelle came and stood beside you, and put his cold little nose against your cheek, and licked your face with his tongue. It was rough at first, but by-and-by it got softer and softer, till you woke up and wanted a drink, and found beside you, in place of the wild gazelle, a white mother with a brimming cup in her hand. She covered you up when you were through, and kissed you, and then you went looking for the wild gazelle, and sometimes you found him; but sometimes, when you had just caught up to him and his silvery feet were shining like stars, he turned into Grandfather with his cane. "Hi, sleepy-head! The dicky-birds are waitin’ for you." And then Grandfather would tickle you in the ribs, and help you on with your stockings, till it was time for him to sit by the wall in the sun. When you were naughty, and Mother used the little brown switch that hung over the wood-shed door, Grandfather tramped up and down in the garden, and the harder you hollered, the harder Grandfather tramped. Once when you played the empty flower-pots were not flower-pots at all, but just cannon-balls, and you killed a million Indians with them, Mother showed you the pieces, and the switch descended, and the tears fell, and Grandfather tramped and tramped, and lost the garden-path completely, and stepped on the pansies. Then they shut you up in your own room up-stairs, and you cried till the hiccups came. You heard the dishes rattling on the dining-room table below. They would be eating supper soon, and at one end of the table in a silver dish there would be a chocolate cake, for Lizzie-in-the-kitchen had baked one that afternoon. You had seen it in the pantry window with your own eyes, while you fired the flower-pots. Now chocolate cake was your favorite, so you hated your bread-and-milk, and tasted and wailed defiantly. Now and then you listened to hear if they pitied and came to you, but they came not, and you moaned and sobbed in the twilight, and hoped you would die, to make them sorry. By-and-by, between the hiccups, you heard the door open softly. Then Grandfather’s hand came through the crack with a piece of chocolate cake in it. You knew it was Grandfather’s hand, because it was all knuckly. So you cried no more, and while the chocolate cake was stopping the hiccups, you heard Grandfather steal down the stairs, softly—but it did not sound like Grandfather at all, for you did not hear the stumping of his cane. Next morning, when you asked him about it, his vest shook, and just the tip of his tongue showed between his teeth, for that was the way it did when anything pleased him. And Grandfather said: "You won’t ever tell?" "No, Grandfather." "Sure as shootin’?" "Yes." "Well, then—" but Grandfather kept shaking so he could not tell. "Oh, Grandfather! _Why_ didn’t the cane sound on the stairs?"