But the entire time Mr. Rogers was subjected to the keenest scrutiny
imaginable. Nothing he did escaped two pairs of eyes at least. Signals
were flashed below as well as above the table. These signals were of
the kind birds know perhaps--others might be aware of their existence
if they listened very attentively, yet might not interpret them. No
Comanche ever sent more deft communications unobserved to his brother
across a camp fire.
Yet nothing was done visibly; no crumb was flicked; and the table hid
the pressure of the toe which, fortunately, no one intercepted.
Monkey, at any rate, had eyes in both her feet, and Jimbo knew how to
keep his counsel without betrayal. But inflections of the voice did
most of the work--this, with flashes of brown and blue lights,
conveyed the swift despatches.
'My underneath goes out to him,' Monkey telegraphed to her brother
while she asked innocently for 'jam, please, Jimbo'; and he replied,
'Oh, he's all right, I think, but better not go too fast,' as he wiped
the same article from his chin and caught her big brown eye upon him.
'He'll be our Leader,' she conveyed later by the way she stirred her
cup of tea-hot-water-milk, 'when once we've got him "out" and taught
him'; and Jimbo offered and accepted his own resignation of the
coveted, long-held post by the way he let his eyelid twiddle in answer
to her well-directed toe-nudge out of sight.
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