was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up
her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had
finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or
two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn't know Tom was
looking at her; she was see-sawing on the elder bough, lost to almost
everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

"Oh, you greedy thing!" said Tom, when she had swallowed the last
morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she
ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have
refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different
point of view before and after one's own share of puff is swallowed.

Maggie turned quite pale. "Oh, Tom, why didn't you ask me?"

"I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought
of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."

"But I wanted you to have it; you know I did," said Maggie, in an
injured tone.

"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair. If I go halves, I'll go
'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy."

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a
stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been
looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears
and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the
excellent dog accepted Tom's attention with as much alacrity as if he
had been treated quite generously.

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which
distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from
the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself
up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the
world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for
Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie's palate was not at
all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner
than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said
he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help
it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her
for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way
to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look
for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was
he likely to be gone, and