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. Discovery was, of course, inevitable. One day Paula came into the dim and solemn Varick library where lessons were conducted with her big, wistful, gray eyes all wet and wincing, and her queer, sprightly little face like a mask of grief. Behind her came nurse with the expression of a hanging judge. The culprit, it appeared, had been found in the possession of contraband goods--to wit, a wad of much-chewed gum. Worse, it had been discovered in a most inappropriate place. “I puh-hut it in my huh-huh-hair,” wept the sorrowful little Tiger, “and it stu-huh-huck.” [Illustration: I puh-hut it in my huh-huh-hair 364] “She won't tell me where she got it,” said nurse. “I did. I to-hold you an angel gave it to me,” declared the Tiger, clinging with pathetic resolution to her drama of the roof. Nurse sniffed. Her theological imagination did not extend to heavenly visitors who dispensed that kind of manna. It was _her_ opinion for what it was worth (sniff) that somebody had been throwing things (sniff) on the roof. Next time it might be (sniff) poison. Nurse _did_ have an imagination of a kind.