DOGTOWN

After the Battle.

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DOGTOWN
BEING SOME CHAPTERS FROM THE ANNALS OF
THE WADDLES FAMILY, SET DOWN IN
THE LANGUAGE OF HOUSEPEOPLE

BY
MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
AUTHOR OF “TOMMY-ANNE,” “THE FRIENDSHIP OF NATURE”
“BIRDCRAFT,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY PORTRAITS FROM LIFE
BY THE AUTHOR

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1902
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

“Such soft, warm bodies to cuddle,

Such queer little hearts to beat;

Such swift, round tongues to kiss,

Such sprawling, cushiony feet.

She could feel in her clasping fingers

The touch of the satiny skin,

And a cold, wet nose exploring

The dimples under her chin.”

This Book is for all those who love children and dogs

CONTENTS

Angel Dogs.

Illustrations

DOGTOWN

CHAPTER I
ENTER MRS. WADDLES

Happy sat by the watering-trough, waiting for Baldy to come for the milking pails and go for the cows.

Waddles, lying on the sunny side of the lilac hedge, was also waiting for this important evening happening; and though nothing in his appearance told that he was on the watch, for his back was toward the barn, yet he would know when Baldy crossed the yard to wash his hands at the pump, gauge the time he took to reach the house, and, without hurrying or looking round, be at his side the moment that the clashing of tin told that he had really come for the pails.

Seated on the stone wall, Anne and Miss Letty were also waiting, partly for Baldy, but chiefly to hear the evening music that would soon come from the wooded field edge and near-by garden, for it was a lovely May afternoon. In the morning there had been a warm rain that made worm pulling and bug hunting a pleasure instead of labour for the birds, and the air was full of scraps of song.

You have not met Happy before, or Miss Letty either. Happy was a beagle hound, with long, tan-coloured ears, the daintiest bit of a nose, a plump body marked and ticked with tan and black, and eyes of such beseeching softness that if she but looked at you when you were eating, you were impelled to give her the very last morsel, no matter what your hunger might be.

Her legal name and pedigree was recorded in the Westminster Kennel Club register as “Cadence out of Melody, by Flute, breeder J. Sanford, Hilltop Kennels,” and really for two years of her life she had been merely a kennel dog. Now she was a lady of distinction, a real person beloved of Anne, Happy, of Happy Hall, mother of twin pups, Jack and Jill, and wife of no less honourable a person than Waddles, who, now past middle age, portly and sedate, was Mayor of Dogtown and an undisputed authority on all matters of dog law and etiquette.

If you should look for Dogtown on the map of the county where Happy Hall, Anne’s home, is located, you would not find it, for it is really concealed under the pretty name of Woodlands, and was discovered quite by accident by Anne’s Aunt Prue.

Now Aunt Prue was one of those ladies who prefer indoors to outdoors, and cats to dogs. The “Fireside Sphinx” has many virtues, and its rights should be respected, only it is a very strange thing that people who love cats cannot seem to fully appreciate dogs, which of course are the superior animals.

One day, a couple of years before this time, when Lumberlegs, the St. Bernard, then an awkward pup, was a new arrival, and the Widow Dog Lily, who had been rescued from starving by Miss Jule, had been adopted by Tommy and become his guardian, Aunt Prue had come unexpectedly to pay her brother, Anne’s father, a visit.

She had not intended to arrive unannounced, for she liked to be met by the best go-to-meeting surrey and pair. But travelling and even planning for it always flustered her; and when she wrote to tell of her plans, after spoiling three sheets of paper, she directed the letter to another brother in Texas. Consequently, when she arrived at the Woodlands station at noon of a blazing July day,—she always took midday trains, it’s apt to thunder in the afternoon,—there was no one there to meet her. “No, marm, no hacks here to-day,” said the station master in answer to her request for one; “no use in ’phoning the stable either, all the teams here about have gone to the Sunday-school picnic, and I reckon the only folks to home is dogs.” So saying he banged down his office window and drifted across the road to dinner.

Aunt Prue paused and set down a stout wicker basket with an openwork top that she carried, straightened her bonnet, felt in her glove to be sure that her trunk check and return ticket were safe. She always bought a return ticket as a sort of guarantee of safety, but usually lost it before it could be used.

She looked up the hill road. There was the store and post-office, then a quarter of a mile of open before the shade began, not a living thing was in sight; it was too hot for even the chickens to scratch up the dust.

The basket at her feet began to roll about uncannily, for in it was Miss Prue’s tortoise-shell tabby cat, which she always took visiting when she was going to stay more than two nights. In politics Miss Prue was a stanch monarchist of the old-time, “off-with-his-head” variety. The cat’s name was Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, and never, even in the most informal and playful moments, was she called either Gussie or Vic.

A violent scratching in the basket was followed by a long-drawn meow! Miss Prue took a small tin pan from her satchel and went toward the pump to give the pet a drink; but as she only pumped a couple of strokes, the water was tepid and not to her taste. She always gave the cat iced water, so she put up the tin. Poor K. A. V., smothering in the basket, would have been grateful for a lap of anything that was wet—even puddle water or sour milk; but she was not consulted, and her temper waxed fierce. If people could only realize that the faults of their pets are chiefly of their own making, they would be more careful to look at those things that concern an animal from its point of view instead of their own.

With one more glance at the road, Miss Prue settled the basket firmly on her arm and trudged off. Augusta Victoria was not happy and, moreover, she was determined to get out of the basket.

For a few moments she sat in sullen silence making herself heavy, as only an animal being moved against its will knows how to do. The post-office was reached, and Miss Prue paused a few moments to rest on the steps. Happy thought! There was a late morning mail; perhaps the family had not yet called for it, as they were sure to do, for her brother being a literary man was very particular about his letters. She would inquire.

“Nope,” replied the girl who was tending office during the noon hour and preparing to hie to the picnic later by taking her hair out of curl papers and combing it into a mossy-looking bank above her freckled forehead, “your folks live beyond a mile, and the rural delivery fetches ’em their letters most times.”

Poor Miss Prue! She crossed over to “the leading grocer’s,” where “soft drinks” were conspicuously advertised, and asked for a bottle of sarsaparilla.

“Sorry, madam,” said the solitary clerk, popping up in some confusion. He was finishing his toilet, preparatory to leaving, by shaving himself at a scrap of mirror resting on the cash register, and he came forward hurriedly with a billow of lather where his chin should have been. “I very much regret to say that all our liquid refreshments except molasses and vinegar are sold out on account of the picnic, but we still have a few Uneeda biscuits, madam, and a small wedge of superior extra mild cheese, if it would serve you for a luncheon. Ah, a drink! You don’t need a biscuit, not juicy enough. Ha! ha! I see,” and the chinless gentleman retired, laughing at his own wit.

Miss Prue merely gasped and walked on without answering. K. A. V. took a turn at scratching and lunging and then remained so passive that her mistress began to have qualms lest she should have fainted, yet did not dare open the basket. She leaned against the fence and listened, puss was breathing. The few cottages along the way were closed and silent; but as she got farther on where the larger places were scattered, her courage arose, for she remembered that the Burgess model farm barns were on the way, and that there was a well close by the fence.

Yes, there it was surely, with a bright clean dipper hanging by it.

She put down the basket carefully, quenched her thirst, and then, after bathing her forehead with her handkerchief, was feeling in her bag for pussy’s dish, when a bumping sound made her drop it and turn hastily. K. A. V. had made a sudden spring, the basket was plunging down the bank, followed by an inquisitive fox terrier. Just as the basket stopped rolling the cat gave a terrified yowl, and the terrier started back, but only for a moment.

Miss Prue seized the basket and looked about, calling in vain for help, but no one came, only more dogs, so she hurried back to the road, closing the gate behind her in frantic haste.

But what is a bar gate to dogs? Those that could neither get under or through, jumped over, for the dogs at the Burgess farm were always in fine condition. A second fox terrier sprang between the bars, a black-and-tan dachshund crawled under, while almost at the same time a collie and a greyhound cleared the top rail.

They were polite, gentlemanly dogs, fortunately, and accustomed to the best society. They never thought of touching Miss Prue; but in spite of her gestures turned their attention to the basket, sniffing and jostling it and saying things in a way to put Augusta Victoria into a frenzy.

As the strange party went up the hill, the pioneer terrier running ahead seemed to spread the news, for dogs of all degrees kept joining the procession: the great woolly St. Bernard, Rex, from the doctor’s piazza, the farrier’s mongrel black-and-tan, who happened to be coming across lots, two loping foxhounds who belonged to Squire Burley and had been taking a run on their own account, the minister’s water spaniel, the schoolmistress’s pug, a white bull terrier, a comical-looking sheep dog from the milk farm, and lastly, a fantastically arrayed black poodle, with his wool trimmed into as many devices as the tattooing on a Fiji Islander, a silver bangle on one leg, and a crimson satin bow on his collar, joined the mob, in spite of the frantic calls of a maid on the steps of the select inn, who was striving to keep him clean while his owner was at luncheon; for this particular poodle had his teeth cleaned every day, could not roll in the dirt, and was not as other dogs, for which the others were doubtless thankful.

In a moment, however, he was in the middle of the fray, having the time of his life, enveloped in a cloud of dust, uttering the shrieking bark in which a thoroughbred poodle excels, while the farrier’s cur promptly pulled the satin bow into a string, and the dachshund, who had difficulty in keeping up with the rest, nipped the hairless parts of his hind legs.

Aunt Prue’s last hope lay in the sheriff; he surely would not be at the picnic. But he was, and his two dogs, Schnapps and Friday, dozing on a wagon seat before the stable door, suddenly waked and joined the procession.

Finding that gestures and threats were useless, Aunt Prue kept sturdily on, shifting the basket from one arm to the other as its weight increased; for Augusta Victoria, weight fifteen pounds, springing lightly up a tree, and A. V., dashing about in the basket at the end of a hot walk, were two wholly different cats. Under such circumstances “a mile’s weight” should be an allowable term.

Just then she heard the rattle of a wagon coming up hill, and turned about, hoping for relief. In this wagon was an old man on his way home from the meadows, seated on an insecure load of salt hay, in which he was buried almost to the shoulders, while a strip of green cotton mosquito netting hanging from the edge of his wide hat, somewhat obscured his view of the scenery.

To beg a ride was, under the circumstances, out of the question; but Aunt Prue ventured to wave her satchel and to call out and ask him to drive the dogs away. But he was deaf to her entreaties, for the reason that he was stone deaf anyway; and as to the rest, he merely thought he saw a vigorous, stout, middle-aged woman on her return from market with an unusual lot of dogs, whose dinner she carried in her basket; and he drove on, trying to reckon how much it must cost to feed thirteen dogs, and set Aunt Prue down in his mind as “another fool woman.”

At last she saw in the distance the stone wall that surrounded Happy Hall, and then a glimpse of the house through the trees revived her; but as she passed in the gateless entrance, two new and strange dogs greeted her,—Lily and Lumberlegs,—both rather objected to the visitors, and suddenly Lily fastened her wide jaws upon the basket.

Then at last poor Aunt Prue screamed loud and long, and Waddles, who had at first discreetly surveyed the proceedings from the porch, threw back his head and bayed. It was a very funny scene, though of course not nice for Aunt Prue; but it often happens that funny things are disagreeable to somebody.

At the double noise, doors flew open, Baldy ran from the stable, Anne, her father, mother, and one of the maids from the house, while Waddles danced about and issued dog orders with such good effect that by the combined efforts the intruders were dispersed, Aunt Prue was ensconced in a piazza rocker and was being fanned by her gentle sister-in-law, Anne brought iced ginger ale, Baldy bore Augusta Victoria, basket and all, to a retired room in the barn, where she could be fed and calm her nerves, while the father by degrees unravelled the history of the walk.

At first Aunt Prue had cried, but now she sat bolt upright and severe in her chair, talking between sips of ginger ale that would get into her nose and give her a fuzziness of speech.

“Yes—a most unparalleled—experience for a lone woman—in a civilized land—Woodlands you—call the place—faugh!—I say it’s nothing more or less than Dogtown, and it’s lucky I bought my return ticket. Poor Augusta Victoria’s nerves are shattered, not to speak of mine, and home we go by evening train.”

She didn’t go, but stayed three weeks to a day, and had a very good time; when she felt in her moist gloves for the ticket, it was gone as usual. But her story and name of Dogtown stayed with the region, and it tickled Miss Jule so, that the very next Christmas she gave Anne a large wooden box shaped like a doghouse, full of note-paper with a group of dogs’ heads and the words Happy Hall, Dogtown, stamped across the top in blue and gold, which Anne always used when writing invitations to picnics and other excursions of which she was so fond.

So in time it had come to be that Waddles was the acknowledged head of Dogtown and its people, these same being three times the number that had been the escort of Miss Prue and Augusta Victoria. For when people heard of the doings of the dogs at Happy Hall, and saw the beautiful setters, foxhounds, and field spaniels that Miss Jule raised in the Hilltop Kennels at the horse farm, every one wanted a dog of his or her own; and though Lily remained the only real bulldog in the community, there were several clever bull terriers, and Miss Letty brought back from her schooling abroad a wonderful black poodle, who understood three languages.

The Mayor of Dogtown.

Miss Jule’s dogs did not quite belong to Dogtown as citizens, because, being kennel dogs, they were not free to come and go and to express their opinions like the others. They were as boarding-school children, having fixed times for exercise and play, in comparison to those who, after school, run free.

There are some children who, though they may have good dispositions, can never be happy when cooped up and restrained. Tommy-Anne had been one of these, and so when, a year before, she had seen Cadence the beagle sitting looking mournfully through the slat door of her kennel, where she had been shut by her trainer for being heedless and unmanageable and not obeying his directions, her heart smote her and she felt so intimate a kinship with the little animal with the hopeless eyes, that she went to Miss Jule to ask the price of Cadence and if she might pay for her by instalments.

Miss Jule loved animals dearly, was tender-hearted, and had several pet dogs that were almost human; but the kennel dogs were raised for sale, and must be taught the various trades that, together with their pure breeding, made them valuable and able to earn their living.

No cruelty was allowed in the training-and-breaking-to-hunt process, but they simply must learn. Martin, Baldy’s brother, who not only broke colts under Miss Jule’s supervision, but trained both fox and beagle hounds, had said of gentle Cadence: “She’s no mortal use for hunting rabbits, she won’t mind if you chide her, unless your very eyes are upon her, she bolts at sight of a gun, won’t heel or gather with the others. We don’t need her for breeding, and I think she’d be better out of the way.”

While Miss Jule was thinking over the matter, Anne had hurried home and counted the contents of her money box replete with the results of Christmas, a birthday, copying manuscript for her father, and various dealings in rags, bottles, and old iron. She had been saving seriously to buy a camera holding glass plates that she could develop herself, and so be able to take pictures of her dear woods and flowers, the dogs, and, best of all, of her father and mother as they walked out in the garden together in their everyday clothes.

Thirty-seven dollars the money had footed up. The camera that she had chosen, together with the trays, drying rack, red lantern, some plates, etc., would be thirty dollars. Was it possible that Miss Jule would sell a thoroughbred rabbit hound for seven dollars?

Anne knew that she had often received a hundred dollars for a well-broken young hound; but poor Cadence did not seem to be broken at all, except in spirit, so that might make a difference; anyway, the camera could wait, for she kept seeing those appealing eyes, and had an instinctive feeling that Cadence’s fate was in her hands.

“Sell Cadence to you, so she needn’t be shut up so much? What will they say at home to another dog about? You know it was only last week that Tommy told me that Lumberlegs and Lily grinned at each other ‘awfully,’ and that Waddles would not let either of them go to walk with him. What will your mother say?”

Anne had not thought of this, to be sure; but no one at home had ever objected to any animals excepting white mice, and her mother had rebelled at having them kept in a bureau drawer, and finally put them under ban.

As Anne grew older she was more drawn toward those of her own race than when as Tommy-Anne she had played alone; but the birds and little beasts were still her friends and brothers, and ever would be. She would, if possible, get Cadence from behind the bars and risk the consequences.

“What do you want her for? She is either stupid or sullen, and will not even charge or come to heel; she will never learn anything.”

“Please, Miss Jule, I don’t think she is stupid or ugly, only somehow she doesn’t understand; maybe she can’t think when she is shut up so much. You know that when I was little I could never learn lessons in school, but if I sat by father I couldn’t have helped learning if I had tried.”

Miss Jule did not smile at the simple earnestness of the tall slip of a girl with the great dark eyes that looked so pleadingly at her, for Anne at fifteen believed as thoroughly in the brotherhood and rights of all living things as had Tommy-Anne at five.

“Well, I’ll make a bargain with you,” she said at last; “you may have her on a week’s trial: if you like her, you shall have her at a reasonable price” (for Miss Jule knew that with Anne’s ideas it would never do to offer her as a gift something she had offered to purchase); “if you can’t manage her, you can bring her back. Perhaps Waddles may like her for a mate.”

“Here, take a leader,” called Miss Jule, as Anne darted off full of the new idea, “she’s as likely to bolt off to the next county as to go home with you.”

Anne took the leather leash and hurried to open the door of the compartment in the kennel yard where Cadence sat looking wistfully out. After fastening the snap in the collar she tried to lead her out; but Cadence flattened herself to the floor in an agony of fear, no coaxing, no gentle calling of her name produced the least effect, she squatted there motionless as a stone.

Happy’s First View of Waddles.

Anne crouched upon the door-sill quite in despair, then she saw that Cadence’s eyes were fastened upon her face, so she smiled, chirruped to her, and tried what patting her back and smoothing her long ears would do.

The effect was magical; the little hound stopped cowering, looked up, gave a spring, touching Anne’s finger-tips with her tongue, and walked off after her new mistress without further objection.

In fact, as they took the downhill path toward home, Cadence led as if she was quite well aware where she was going, and she tugged and strained so on the leash when she came in sight of the house as to make Anne fairly trot.

Then for the first time Anne thought of the objections that Waddles might make; for though he had chummed with Lumberlegs until recently, their relations were not wholly satisfactory, and as for Lily—well, he never interfered with her, but then also he never asked her to walk with him.

As it chanced Waddles was standing in the middle of the walk sniffing the air, with a very sentimental expression on his mobile face.

Anne slipped the leash, as it does not lead to friendliness when strange dogs meet to have one run free and the other chained. Before Waddles fully realized what had happened, before he could give a sniff or a growl, Cadence evidently captivated by his looks had bounded up, given him the coyest lick on the nose and sprung back again, her tail wagging in a complete circle and an unmistakable smile on her face.

Thus taken by surprise Waddles surrendered, and by way of making the newcomer feel at home he raised his head, gave a bay, and then putting his nose to the ground found the trail he had been trying to locate, gave a short bark and started off in full cry, Cadence following and yelping madly.

“She knows how to pick up a trail if she is stupid,” said Anne to herself; “but I wonder if she will come back here or go up to the Kennels. I think I will just go in and explain about her to mother while she has her run.”

The explanation was fortunately satisfactory; but then Anne’s father and mother seldom objected to anything unless it was unkind, dangerous, or too expensive.

In a quarter of an hour or so back came the pair, evidently the best of friends, Waddles allowing Cadence not only to drink from his dish, but to take a nicely ripened beef bone that he had partly buried under the big apple tree. This was a wonderful bit of condescension, as it is against the rules of Dogtown to dig up another’s bone, at least when the other is looking, and the offence is punishable with a ki-yi-ing and a real bite.

“Mistress,” said Waddles, behind his paw as it were, “that is a very beautiful young lady; I will gladly share my bones with her, and that is something that I have never done before,” which was perfectly true; for Waddles, besides being very strict about food etiquette, thought a good deal about what he ate.

The next morning when Anne came downstairs Cadence was lying on the steps with her back to the house. Anne called her and clapped her hands together, but she did not stir, yet the moment Anne’s footsteps jarred the boards Cadence turned and came to her side.

Then the truth flashed upon Anne, the little hound was neither stupid nor disobedient, but almost stone deaf. She could not hear the voice, but felt the sound as it were from the footstep.

“There, I told Miss Jule that you weren’t wicked, but that you couldn’t understand all that shouting and to-heeling, you dear little abused thing. Now I’ll know exactly how to treat you and what to expect.” And Anne held the pretty, soft paws in one hand while she lifted the dog’s face so that it might see what she said.

Truly, then, Cadence understood once and for all, and when puzzled always looked in her mistress’s face.

When Miss Jule heard the story, she questioned all at the Horse Farm and about the Kennels closely, and found that once, when Cadence was a pup of less than a year, a gun had burst quite close to her head.

“Now,” said Anne, triumphantly, “you see why she was gun shy, and deaf, and everything. You know, Miss Jule, animals are hardly ever bad; it’s mostly something what we’ve done ourselves, and it’s being a kennel dog, too. You see you can never be really intimate with them, and know their troubles as I do Waddles.”

Miss Jule sighed, for she knew it was true.

From that day onward Cadence was a new dog, no longer sad eyed, though she knew mighty well how to plead for what she wanted with those golden brown eyes, but the most joyous thing alive.

She was pleased if she had a bone, or equally pleased with a dog biscuit, happy to go to walk, happy to stay at home; her face wore a perpetual smile, and her tail a ceaseless wag.

“Let us call her something different from that old kennel name, even if she can’t hear it,” said Anne, one day six months later, as they stood watching Cadence tending her first children, the fascinating twins, Jack and Jill, and teaching them to lap milk.

“Yes,” assented Tommy, who stood by, pondering as to how soon the pups might be harnessed to a toy cart; “let’s call her Happy, she is always so glad.” And Happy it is—Mrs. Happy Waddles of Happy Hall.

“Now there’s something else between us besides not understanding things when we are shut up,” said Anne, making the hound stand up and put both paws in her lap. “We are both named one thing and called another; for you probably don’t know, my dear, unless Waddles has told you, that my true name is Diana, after the hunting lady, and really I think some night this fall I’ll live up to it and go out with you and Waddles to hunt rabbits.”

So this is the annal of the coming of Happy, wife of Waddles, Mayor of Dogtown.

CHAPTER II
MISS LETTY AND HAMLET

Spring always brought many arrivals at Miss Jule’s farm, so that Anne and Tommy found some new animal at every visit: either an awkward, frolicsome colt, a fawn-eyed Jersey calf, or a litter of pups; for Miss Jule was so successful in rearing healthy animals that those she could not keep met with a ready sale everywhere.

The children went up nearly every afternoon in fine weather, riding their bicycles all but the steepest part of the way, and having a safe and easy coast back, for the road was broad, smooth as a floor, and there were no cross-roads the entire length of the slope, cross-roads being very bad things for coasters either on wheels or sleds.

Anne, however, did not care about wheeling as much as for riding horseback. During the past two years Miss Jule’s old brown horse Fox, though well on in his twenties, had been a safe mount for her, as well as an intelligent companion. Of course she never rode very fast, and was always careful to walk him down hills; as old horses, no matter if they are thoroughbreds, sometimes kneel at the wrong time. But he was very clever at taking narrow paths through the woods, and keeping clear of the trees, walking up the little brook which was one of Anne’s favourite pastimes, without pawing the water and soaking her skirt.

Anne’s father had a beautiful young horse Tom, which he both rode and drove, but who did not like side-saddles, and did not intend wearing one. So one day when Anne had ridden him up through the orchard pasture to look for the cows that had gone astray, he first tried to scrape her off by squeezing against the tree trunk, and then, when she dismounted to see if the saddle or girths could possibly gall him, he took a roll in the spring, saddle and all, and galloped home, leaving Anne to walk.

So Fox remained her pet, and all she had to do to make him come when she wanted a ride was to go to the pasture, where he spent his days luxuriously shod with rubber tips, or to the barnyard, where he was watered, and say “Fox!” ever so softly, and he would come trotting up, to be either petted or saddled, eager to nibble the bit of sugar, carrot, or bunch of clover that she always brought him, putting back his ears meanwhile in pure mischief, and pretending to bite her fingers, while his nostrils seemed to quiver with laughter at the joke.

In the middle days of this particular spring, the one that came before the summer when Waddles and Lumberlegs had their great fight, it was neither Fox nor the new calves that drew Anne so often to the Hilltop Farm, but Miss Letty and Hamlet: Miss Letty being neither calf, colt, nor puppy, but a very pretty girl, and Hamlet a worldly-wise French poodle.

Miss Letty was the orphan niece of Miss Jule, the child of her only brother who had lived abroad for many years, married a French lady, and died there. Miss Letty had been sent to an English and then a French school by another aunt, her mother’s sister; now as her father had willed it, she had come on a visit to America, so that she might see his country and choose with which aunt she preferred to make her home.

When Anne heard that Miss Jule’s niece was coming to make a visit half a year long, and that she had a pet dog, she was very much excited, for Anne was beginning to long for a companion of her own age. She only hoped that Waddles would like the dog visitor, and then they four could take lovely excursions together afoot and on horseback, that is, if a girl from a French boarding-school knew how to manage horses; if she didn’t, of course she could ride Fox until she learned.

Anne did not know exactly how old Letty was, though of course Miss Jule did; but she always thought and spoke of her as a schoolgirl, and told Anne that it would be a fine chance to improve her French, and that in return she could teach Letty about wood things, for Letty had been brought up almost altogether in the city. So Anne wondered whether she knew enough French to make Letty understand, and went about talking to herself and all the animals on the place in such words as she knew, much to the confusion and disgust of Waddles, who recognized something familiar in the invitation to aller à la poste, yet did not quite understand it as the usual invitation to “go to the post-office.”

At first Tommy had not been interested. “If it was a rather big boy with a real gun that was coming, we could go hunting together and have some fun next cold weather when the bunnies come out. Girls aren’t much good excepting Anne, and even she don’t seem to care for guns either,” he said.

Tommy’s latest treasure was a spring shot-gun that went off with an alarming pop, but for which he had no ammunition, so as yet he went about, cocking, aiming, and firing at imaginary big game,—real squirrels and crows,—quite content to see them scurry away in alarm; at the same time being careful, as his father had charged him, never to point it at people, for this is a “mustn’t be” of a real gun, which a boy must learn by heart before he can even dream of owning one.

When one Saturday morning Martin, who lived at the Hilltop Farm, came with a note saying that Miss Letty and Hamlet had arrived, and that Miss Jule would be happy to have Anne and Tommy come up to dinner, Tommy forgot his poor opinion of girls in general and was as eager as Anne herself.

Miss Jule kept to the country habit of a one o’clock dinner, and had a hearty but movable tea at the end of day, when for six months of the year one begrudges spending much time indoors. As the note came before nine o’clock, it was too much to expect that the children should wait until nearly dinner time before accepting the invitation.

“Of course,” said Anne, in explanation of starting at ten o’clock, “at most places it doesn’t do to go until a few minutes before you are asked, because the people may be busy, or making the dessert, or not dressed; but Miss Jule is always busy, has fruit for dessert, and is never dressed, so she’s quite as ready one time as another,” which somewhat startling statement of Anne’s did not mean that Miss Jule was a clothesless savage, but simply that, without the useless state of fuss and feathers known as “being dressed,” she was always ready to have her friends come and take her as they found her, which was usually doing something interesting.

Waddles had an extra brushing in honour of going out to dine, for he also had several friends at the Hilltop Kennels with whom he exchanged very pleasant calls. In fact, they belonged to his particular hunting-club, that admitted only the most discreet citizens of Dogtown, and had a limited membership.

With the regular kennel dogs Waddles had only a sniffing acquaintance, which is the same as a mere bowing acquaintance among house people. But besides these dogs that were bought and sold, trained for hunting and sent travelling about to shows and held trials, Miss Jule had four who were pets and house fourfoots, even though two were rather large for this purpose.

These were Mr. Wolf, whose registered name was Ben Uncas, a long-coated St. Bernard, with beautiful silky hair, and a very gentle face that belied the fact that he was a mighty hunter, who seemed to have a little wolf blood in his veins; Quick, the most agile and impertinent of fox terriers; Tip, a retrieving spaniel, in size between a field and a cocker, who wore a coat of wavy golden red hair, and rivalled even Waddles in wisdom; and Colin, an Irish setter, big for his breed, and as clumsy and affectionate as a well-bred dog could be.

Colin could boast a Dogtown record almost as free from fighting as Waddles, but for a different reason. He was handsome, but not over valiant, and when some indiscretion of his aroused the ire of another dog, Colin would immediately roll over on his back and kick his four legs so fast that his confused opponent could get no grip whatever, and usually found that he had urgent business on the other side of the street.

Anne and Tommy rode up the long hill very slowly, partly because it was rather early, and partly because they had on fresh wash suits for the first time that season, and wash suits look best before they are withered. At least Anne thought of this, for she had heard that Miss Letty had money enough to buy all the pretty clothes she wished, and likely as not she might wear muslin shirt waists and lots of pretty ribbons. Though Anne did not bother much about her dresses, and had not worn her best frock, lest she might wish to play, she felt more comfortable to know that her cambric gown with its plain, turnover collar was clean, and that her cherry-coloured hair ribbons were new and had not been “retrieved” by the whole Waddles family in turn.

“I know it’s rather early,” said Anne, after greeting Miss Jule, who for a wonder was sitting in idleness amid an unusual number of vases that waited for flowers on the side porch that overlooked the prim, old-fashioned garden; “but I thought we could see the new setter pups if Miss Letty was busy or tired or anything; and if she wasn’t, we could play hide-and-seek with her and Mr. Wolf and Waddles up in the corn-field. Some of the last year’s stacks are there yet, and we can creep into them finely. Her dog may not know how to play, and we can teach him.”

Miss Jule gave a queer little short laugh, started to say something, stopped with a very funny expression on her plain, jolly face, and said: “It’s not at all too early. Letty is over there in the garden beyond the hedge, getting me some flowers for these big jars. You can introduce yourselves, and ask her to play hide-and-seek, only I’m afraid that Waddles will not like Hamlet. Tip was so rude that I’ve had to tie him up.”

Anne called Waddles, who was talking to Mr. Wolf in his day retreat under the steps, and went down the path with Tommy, not noticing that Mr. Wolf, Quick, and Colin were following, or that Tip joined the trio as soon as they were past the lilac hedge, showing by his collarless condition that he had broken jail.

Miss Letty.

As the children looked about they did not see any little girl. Ah, yes, there was a flutter of white the other side of the bulb beds, so they turned in that direction to find a young lady standing among the borders, dressed in such dainty, lovely, flower-coloured clothes as they had never seen before, at least, never in a garden. One slender white hand hung by her side, while the other grasped the iris stalks. They could not see her face because of the lace that drooped from her hat, but her hair was light brown, and as fluffy as thistle-down.

Could this be the little girl companion that Anne had longed for? Her heart fell in disappointment. Yes, it must be, for there was no one else in the garden.

“She is a grown-up young lady, with gowns that wiggle on the ground, and all our fun is spoilt,” said Anne, softly, checking Tommy who was about to call out.

Tommy, however, was not so sure that he was disappointed; the pretty girl attracted him, and he walked directly toward her. At that moment Waddles, catching sight of a strange-looking dog, partly hidden in the grass, gave a bark, and the face under the broad hat turned toward them, opened its mouth and spoke, setting their doubts as to its being Miss Letty at rest.

“This is Anne I know,” said a delightful, laughing voice, that spoke every word distinctly, with hardly a bit of accent, and yet had an intimate sound, “and Tommy, too. Ah, yes, I know you very well, and if you’d not come to see me this morning, I should have called upon you this afternoon. I suppose that dear dog with the long ears is Waddles, come to be introduced to Hamlet,” and she raised an odd silver whistle that hung from her belt by a chain and gave two short calls.

“Yes, we came as soon after Miss Jule sent the note as we could,” said Tommy, collecting himself more quickly than Anne, “though mother said dinner at one meant not to start before half-past twelve. But we didn’t know that you were so old or could talk our way, and Anne thought she must speak French, and she’s been muttering all the way up, though Waddles and I didn’t like it, for we think American is good enough for anybody. Besides, Anne said perhaps you’d like to play hide-and-seek up in the corn-field. You see, we didn’t know you were a kind of flower fairy.”

Then Miss Letty’s eyes met Anne’s, and they both burst into a merry laugh that made them fast friends, while she shook hands heartily with Tommy instead of kissing his little pug nose as she wished, which would have offended him as being babyish.

“Certainly, I will play hide-and-seek if you will tell me precisely what you expected to find me, Miss Anne. I think that you look disappointed.”

“I’m not Miss, I’m only plain Anne, who used to be Tommy-Anne until six years ago, when Tommy came; at least I’m called Anne, because I don’t like my real name, Diana. You know so few people say it nicely, and Obi calls it Dinah, the same as the fat coloured woman’s name who lives up the road and launders our very best things.”

“Is your name really Diana?” cried Miss Letty, clapping her hands in delight. “It is the name of one of my dearest friends at school, whom I miss dreadfully, and who had dark hair and eyes like yours. I will call your name smoothly like this, Diane, the French way, for it is a pleasure to me, and then perhaps you will grow to like it; for a girl who loves horses and dogs could not be named better.”

“Yes, Miss Letty, I think I do like it already, and I might as well tell you that I thought you would be a girl like me, so that we could tramp about and do things together, and take pictures when I get my new camera, and I did think you might like to play hide-and-seek this morning with our dogs, and teach yours how, but of course—”

“Of course I shall be charmed to play hide-and-seek, and be your companion, even if I am very old,—quite eighteen. Come, we will begin now as soon as I take these flowers to my aunt,” and she gathered the iris into the skirt of her dainty gown upon which tiny violets formed stripes that matched the iris in colour.

“I shall call you ‘flower lady,’” said Tommy, decidedly, with a sturdy expression of face that quite settled the matter as far as he was concerned.

“Now I’m ready, but where is Hamlet?” said Letty, after she had given Miss Jule the flowers. “Ah, here he comes, and a chance also to try your French, Diane, for the only English word he knows is his name. Now for hide-and-seek.”

“But surely you aren’t going to wear your best gown and slippers to play hide-and-seek in the corn-field and woods for there are lots of old briers and prickly things,” expostulated Anne, glancing at Miss Jule; but as the latter went on arranging her flowers and said nothing, Anne feared she had been rude.

“This isn’t a best gown, only a muslin—see, I can hold it up so,” and Miss Letty threw the trailing skirt over her arm, showing an underskirt so frail that plainly clad Anne nearly gasped in spite of herself. “And I never wear thick shoes; in fact, I haven’t any, though they might be useful here.”

Then she turned and began chatting gayly in French to Hamlet who came down the path, looking somewhat anxiously behind him. As a dog of his breed Hamlet was doubtless quite perfect; but to Anne, accustomed to the rough-and-ready citizens of Dogtown, to whom a bath and a brushing was full dress, his costume was rather startling. His long hair, which on his crown and shoulders hung in stringy curls like a mop, was shaved close on the lower part of his body, with the exception of a tuft on each hip and bands around his ankles. His clean-shaven face was decorated by a long mustache, he wore a silver bangle collar run with blue ribbon that hardly showed amid his curls, and a bracelet on one ankle. At a signal from his mistress he sprang upon a low wicker stand that served as a porch tea table, sat erect, and saluted.

Tommy was delighted, of course, and Miss Letty made him do all his tricks, of which he knew as many as a circus dog. He waltzed, he said his prayers, he fetched a handkerchief from Miss Letty’s room, although he had only been in the house two days, and so on, ending by turning three somersaults and barking like mad when Miss Letty waved her handkerchief and cried, “Vive la Republique!”

“What do you think of Hamlet?” asked Miss Letty, throwing herself into a hammock to get her breath. “Can Waddles do as many tricks?” she added, rather piqued that Anne was not more enthusiastic, “and does he always mind when you speak to him?”

“I think Hamlet is very clever. No, Waddles does not do tricks; but he knows a great deal, and a great many things that take a great deal of thinking out. For one thing, he knows how to take care of himself, though I can’t say that he always minds so very well; but I am sure that he is a more durable country dog than Hamlet.”

“Minding is everything,” said Miss Letty, decidedly; “Hamlet obeys every word I say, and so he never really has to think for himself. Sh! Tais-toi!” she cried, clapping her hands, for Hamlet having once started to bark in honour of the French Republic had no mind to stop; and as every one knows, who has either owned or lived next door to one, a poodle has a voice of such piercing and incessant shrillness that even a fence cat on a moonlight night cannot compete with it.

Hamlet would not listen, and kept on tearing round the house and barking, until not only all the dogs in the kennels were set agog, but the signal travelled over Dogtown and answering barks could be heard for a mile away, while Miss Jule put her fingers in her ears and Anne burst out laughing in spite of herself.

“He’s a little upset,” said his mistress when he was finally quiet; “he is not used to so much space, and it’s gone to his head.”—“Come,” she called, speaking French rapidly, “sit up and smoke your pipe to calm yourself, and read the paper.”

Hamlet meekly mounted the stand again, while his mistress produced a short clay pipe from her work-bag that hung by the hammock and stuck it in his mouth, perched Miss Jule’s eyeglasses upon his nose, and held the morning paper before him.

“No, do not look at me—read!” she said, as his eyes rolled about in a helpless sort of fashion, “read until I stop counting.”

“Now,” she said, when the lesson was over, “we will all go and play hide-and-seek. Do you know the French for that, Anne? No? Well, it is câche-câche. Come, Tommy, I will race you to the wall;” tossing her skirt once more over her arm, Miss Letty whirled away,—muslin, lace, openwork stockings, high-heeled slippers, and all,—Anne and Tommy padding along after in their broad-soled shoes.

Miss Jule stopped laughing and sighed, saying to herself: “She is sunny tempered and bright, but she has more need to learn American of Anne than Anne has to learn French. I was afraid this morning that the farm was too dull a place for such a dainty lady, but I believe this visit will be the making of her. If only something would happen to the poodle. He gets on my nerves, though I can’t tell why, and I’d quite forgotten that I had any.” This was a strange opinion to come from Miss Jule, who was the friend of every little cur in Dogtown, and had been known to pay the license for more than one poor body in danger of losing a seemingly worthless pet.

Once in the corn-field the difference in age between Anne and Miss Letty melted as if by magic, and they chatted away as merrily as if they had been life-long friends. Anne, looking up to the older girl as a beautiful and superior being, was further enthralled by finding that she knew a great deal about the pictures that she herself loved, and had actually once seen Rosa Bonheur, who painted the wonderful “Horse Fair,” a coloured print of which was Anne’s chief treasure, and had really stood beside her once when she was painting a great white bull.

To Miss Letty, on the other hand, who had never before thought that the country was anything more than a place full of trees and grass that was very dull to stay in for more than a week, and a dreadful place to spoil one’s complexion, Anne’s friendship with wild things seemed like a living fairy tale, and Anne herself a veritable brownie.

Waddles, Mr. Wolf, Quick, Colin, and Tip played hide-and-seek beautifully; but Miss Letty would not let Hamlet join in the game, because she said that his hair was too long and needed clipping, and might get full of straws; then his feet were delicate, and the stubble might cut them, or the briers tear his ears or pull off his bracelet. Then, too, his hair had been freshly oiled to keep it black, after the manner of poodles, and it would be fatal to its lustre if dirt got upon it.

So poor Hamlet had to suffer the shame of being tied to a small tree, in full sight of the other dogs, by one of his mistress’s violet ribbons. He was at heart a manly, brave dog, and in no way responsible for the caprice that makes so many of his tribe play the fool. Also the other dogs seemed to have a contempt for his forlorn and ladylike state, and Anne distinctly saw Tip kick dirt at him in passing, and dignified Waddles nipped his hind leg.

As it drew near noon the trio wandered toward the wooded edge of the field, where Anne said they would be sure to find yellow violets, wind flowers, and spring beauties, and Miss Letty filled her hat with them to take home to paint, and then sat down to rest with Tommy at her feet, while Anne went farther into the wood to look for wild sarsaparilla.

“I’m going to have you for my sweetheart,” said Tommy, suddenly, as he stepped back with his hands behind him, contentedly surveying a rickety-looking wreath of dogwood blossoms that he had put upon Miss Letty’s golden hair, but which would slip down over her eyes. “I think that you are much nicer than Pinkie Scott and Bess and Grace.”

“And who are they, pray?” said Miss Letty, peering through the wreath.

“Oh, they are the others I play with, little girls—all alike, but you are several kinds.”

“You mustn’t say, ‘I’m going to have you,’ in such a way,” said Miss Letty, struggling to be serious; “you must go down on your knees in the dirt and ask me very politely.”

“No,” said Tommy, sturdily, “I won’t. I don’t mind the dirt; but if you ask, people mostly say you mustn’t; but if you say you’re going to, you oftener get it.”

Miss Letty looked up quite surprised at his reasoning and said: “Very well, play I’m your sweetheart. What next?”

“Why, then I must bring you up a present every Sunday just like Baldy does to Miss Jule’s Anna Maria. But, Miss Letty, how long will you be my sweetheart? For ever and ever?”

“That’s too long to promise, Tommy. How will until you want to give me to some one else do?”

“First rate; just listen! those dogs must have struck a good trail down below there; hear them yell. I guess I’ll go and see,” and he quickly disappeared around the hill.

“I can now untie Hamlet,” called Miss Letty to Anne, going to the tree where she had left him; but Hamlet was not there, neither was the sash ribbon.

Miss Letty whistled and called in vain, for the barking and yelping sounded farther and farther away on the other side of the wood, and when she tried to follow its direction, sharp twigs and briers tore her lacy frills, and her high heels caught in the tangled roots, until Anne coming up grasped her arm just in time to prevent her from falling into an old spring hole.

“There is no use in trying to follow the dogs,” said Anne, taking in the situation at a glance; “they are across the river halfway over to Pine Ridge by this time. I think we had better go back to Miss Jule’s, for you look ever so warm, and you are all scratched and tattered.”

“But Hamlet, I must find him; he will be lost and never find his way back, for he does not know the place at all. Besides, it does not agree with him to run, and he may get himself muddy.”

“Of course he will be muddy and very likely tired, but he will be sure to come back with the others. I think they have taken him to show him the way about and introduce him to their friends. They are way up at Squire Burley’s now. I hear his foxhounds baying,” she added, after listening intently for a moment; for her keen ears knew the tones and distinguished between the various Dogtown voices as readily as if they belonged to human friends.

Miss Letty looked ruefully at the shreds hanging from her pretty frock and then gave a little scream as she stretched out one foot and saw her stocking. “Look, Anne! there are bugs all going through the openwork and biting me.”

“They are not bugs” laughed Anne, kneeling to pick them off; “but about half a dozen kinds of last year’s ‘stick tights’ and hook-on seeds; they want your stocking to carry them off and plant them somewhere else. Please, Miss Letty, do girls in French schools wear dancing slippers and party gowns in the woods?”

“Schoolgirls never do. We always wore black frocks, white collars and cuffs, and pinafores, quite like housemaids, and very seldom went out of the big brick-walled garden except at vacation time. Then I travelled about with tante Marie and my uncle, who always wished me to have pretty clothes, and her maid repaired them. And when I was coming here tante Marie said all girls in America dressed like princesses, yes, even the children, and she bought me almost the trousseau of a bride, for I love frou-frous; the heavy English clothes my father used to buy quite choked me. I fear me I can never wear shoes even like yours, Diane, and my Aunt Julie’s—positively, the soles are like a ship’s deck.”

“It is of no use telling her, she will have to find out for herself,” thought Anne; then looking across the field toward the house, she exclaimed, “Why, there is Mr. Hugh, and he has a new horse.”

“Who, pray, is Mr. Hugh?” said Miss Letty, struggling over or rather through her last fence, and leaving several yards of petticoat frill behind. “Whoever he may be he rides well.”

“Mr. Hugh?” hesitated Anne, scarcely realizing that he should be unknown to any one. “Why, Mr. Hugh is a very nice man, but quite old, almost thirty. He owns all the land between Miss Jule’s and Squire Burley’s; he’s big and dark brown, that is, his hair and eyes and mustache are, and mostly his clothes and gaiters; and he grows dogs and horses too, and writes books about the things that smell queer and poison you—chemistry, you know. He has a stone house that’s as strong as a castle, and all the furniture is plain and the chairs are leather, for he hates all kinds of rags hanging to chairs and things like that. He likes pictures and flowers, though, and he gave me my ‘Horse Fair’ print last birthday. He has strawberries in his cold-frame that are nearly ripe, I saw them last week. I do believe he is bringing some to Miss Jule now, for he has a basket. Mr. Hugh doesn’t like young ladies, but only children and people like mother and Miss Jule. But he will be very polite, so you needn’t be afraid of him,” she added, as she saw Miss Letty hesitate and look as if she was going to run away.

As Anne said, Mr. Hugh had brought a basket of delicious strawberries, which Miss Jule handed over to Letty and Anne to arrange for the table, saying, “They are so big you must leave the hulls on and lay them on fresh leaves.”

“I will do it,” said Miss Letty, giving Anne a little push toward the door. “I know that you are longing to see the new horse.”

This was true, and Anne finally, after some difficulty, persuaded Mr. Hugh to accept Miss Jule’s invitation to luncheon, pleading to try the new horse over the little hedge afterward, as Mr. Hugh said he was broken to side-saddle, and a fine jumper.

The luncheon table looked very pretty with Letty’s flower decorations and little vines laid on the cloth, and all went well, Mr. Hugh being less shy than usual. When the strawberries came, they certainly looked very tempting, lying on a bed of leaves, on green glass plates, with a mound of sugar on the side of each to dip them in.

Miss Jule, who was near-sighted, began eating hers, and Mr. Hugh followed in an absent-minded sort of way, for he was talking pasture and other interesting things to his hostess.

Suddenly Anne gave a loud exclamation and then stopped, flushing scarlet in embarrassment.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Hugh, “a bee in the berries?”

“No; but—but—the green leaves under the berries are poison ivy, and you know you poison dreadfully and so does Miss Jule. Oh, and the vines around the table edge are poison too. I didn’t notice at first, the leaves are so small and young.”

“Bless me!” cried Miss Jule, rubbing her lips and finger-tips with her handkerchief. “Run up to my medicine closet, Anne, and bring the bottle labelled ‘Lead water and alcohol,’ and a wad of cotton. Letty, child, you will be sure to be poisoned with all those brier scratches on your wrists.”

“I saw the pretty, shining vine growing up those trees and over the stone fence by the stables and I thought it was American ivy,” stammered Miss Letty, looking ready to cry. “How can it poison us, Aunt Julie? we haven’t eaten any.”

“It’s the juice bites your skin,” interrupted Tommy, promptly, “and then it all blubbers up and gets wet and sticky, and you scratch and scratch, but it doesn’t do any good.”

After Anne, whom poison ivy never harmed, had brought the antidote, and fingers and lips were bathed, they went out under the trees, for no one cared for the berries except Tommy, who crept into the kitchen and washed his vigorously with soap and water, and devoured them with relish.

“Miss Letty is my pretty sweetheart; don’t you wish she was yours?” said Tommy to Mr. Hugh very abruptly, as he was being swung into the wonderful Mexican saddle to try the new horse around the lawn.

“No, I don’t, Tommy; pretty people are all very well, but useful ones with common sense are better,” was the answer.

Miss Letty, coming down the steps as the pair passed by, heard and said to Anne, who was behind her: “I hate your Mr. Hugh. I think he is a bear,” which remark coming out of a seeming clear sky, Anne could not understand.

A diversion, however, was caused by the return of the dogs with much barking and orders of “down” and “to heel,” for they were wet, muddy, and did not smell like roses.

Mr. Wolf bore a muskrat, and Colin brought up the rear with something that had once been a shoe, which he laid at Miss Jule’s feet, with much tail-wagging, as if to say, “It’s merely a trifle, but better than nothing.”

“Hamlet—is—not—with—them,” said Miss Letty, slowly, with almost a sob in her voice.

“We will all walk up the river bank and look for him,” said Miss Jule, cheerfully; “the dogs came back that way.”

They had only gone a couple of hundred feet up the stream when Anne, who was ahead, called, “There he is, sitting on that rock; he must be tired and afraid to swim over alone.”

Then, as they drew nearer, the reason for his sitting still was plain. His heavy curls were a mat of mud, burrs, and briers that must have made either walking or swimming nearly impossible, while the tangle over his eyes was so dense that he could see nothing. His collar was gone, also his bracelet, and his fluffy wristlets hung limp.

At a call from his mistress, however, he half stumbled, half plunged into the shallow stream and threw himself into her lap, and she hugged him, thus completing the wreck of her gown, saying, “You poor, poor boy! we are a pair, you and I, because of our clothes, and not knowing the country.”

It was impossible to comb or pick the straws and burrs from Hamlet’s coat, so next day one of the grooms clipped him close all over and gave him a bath. When he went, meek and shivering with mortification, to his mistress’s room, where she was sitting alone, as the poisoning was doing its work on the scratched wrists and shell-pink ears, she hardly recognized her pet in the lanky black dog with only a tail-tuft left of his curls. As she did not speak, he went over to a low stool, and putting his nose between his paws, “said his prayers,” as she had often made him do for punishment when he had disobeyed.

Then, in spite of her misery, she burst into a hearty laugh, and bade him go out and play with the other dogs, which he very readily did, feeling, if antics tell anything, like a little boy who has just put off petticoats. After his clipping Hamlet was cordially received in Dogtown, and considered one of the boys, and whether or not his hair was allowed to grow or if he ever again wore a scented mustache, remains to be seen.

CHAPTER III
TROUBLE BEGINS

During all these days Lumberlegs, the St. Bernard, grew mightily. When he was a year old, he looked like an awkward young calf; but when his second year was ended, he had the tawny head of a lioness, and his body, well rounded yet muscular, was in keeping with his huge paws.

When he sat and Tommy stood, their heads were on a level, and when they walked abroad together, Tommy tugging sturdily at his collar to keep pace, they usually had the roadway to themselves, for Lumberlegs was not only the largest inhabitant of Dogtown, but of the whole county, and people made so many remarks about his size that Tommy dubbed him Bigness.

Lumberlegs and Tommy.

These same people predicted that some day there would be a dog fight at Happy Hall when Lumberlegs came to realize his strength, and the feeling of jealousy that comes to a dog with full growth. Surely there was material for both jealousy and a fight. Waddles loved Anne with the sort of love that thinks it owns the object of its devotion; Lumberlegs loved both Tommy and Anne in the same way; while Lily, the bulldog, was devoted to Tommy alone, and deeply resented the coming of Happy, who loved every one, as an infringement of her rights; so that at the time Happy became the mother of Jack and Jill, and consequently an object of much attention, there was a considerable strain upon dog tempers.

At this point fate wisely stepped in as she often does, though tears came with her. Lily broke one of the most rigid of dog laws, the penalty for which is death—she defied an express train! In going with Tommy and Anne to the town she did not follow the road and cross the railway bridge with high safe sides, but lingered by the way, sniffing here and then there until she lost sight of her friends, and took a short cut across the fields that bordered the tracks, running between the rails until she should reach a gap in the guard fence that opened on the road the other side.

It was time for the morning express, the particular train that always whistles as it turns the curve, and thrusts out an iron arm to grab the mail bag, swinging from its gallows, while it drops another bag into a rack beneath.

It was always a puzzle to Tommy as to how the bag was seized without missing, and he often coaxed Anne to wait on the bridge until the train came, as there were little star-shaped openings in the iron work through which he could see.

This morning they had crossed, and then hearing the train turned back. Anne missing Lily looked up the hill for her, while Waddles, who, as a matter of course, was one of the party, trotted soberly along toward the village, where he would wait for his mistress upon the steps of either the market or grocery store, according as he understood her destination.

As the train reached the curve Tommy, whose eye was at the chink, gave a shriek and dashed himself at the barrier, wailing: “Lily, Lily, my Lily! She’ll be killed! O Anne, come quick!”

In reality, by this time Lily had crossed the rails and was quite safe, but her master’s cry made her turn to locate him. Whether she thought he was in pain or danger no one knows, but at that moment the train rounded the curve, whistling furiously. To the bewildered dog it must have been associated with her master’s scream or else sounded like a challenge, for like a flash she turned and charged the monstrous engine face to face. Tommy cast himself face downward on the roadway, his tears making mud of the dust. Anne caught hold of the railing and closed her eyes while the train thundered by underneath. Lily lay quite still high up on the bank; the engine had been quickly merciful.

That afternoon Baldy buried Lily in the corner of the orchard pasture where there was quite a company of pet animals, ranging from canaries, with school slates for headstones, to Brownie, the dear old pony that had belonged to Anne’s mother when a girl, and lived out a happy old age in that very pasture. One thing about pet animals is that their lives at best are so short, that we should treat them very kindly to make up for it.

Some of the neighbours laughed at what they called Unhappy Hall Cemetery, but Anne resented this with a good deal of spirit, saying, “I think that it is very mean to love an animal one day, when it is alive and can amuse you, and then throw it on the ash heap the next, just because it’s dead and can’t help itself.”

Tommy still crying, and remorseful at perhaps having caused Lily’s death by calling her at the wrong moment, insisted upon Miss Jule, and his father, and mother attending her funeral. Anne made a wreath of her best flowers, sacrificing four tea rosebuds and all of her mignonette and heliotrope, but Tommy would have none of it. Instead, he begged two beef bones from the cook, and tying them together crosswise with Anne’s best pink hair ribbon, which she had not the heart to deny him, put them on the middle of the mound, saying between sobs, “She—loved—bones—but—she didn’t like flowers—except to sleep on,” which was perfectly true, her favourite places for a siesta having been alternately the verbena, nasturtium, or lettuce bed.

Tommy’s father and mother were resigned, though they did not say much about it before the children. Complaints had begun to reach their ears that Lily not only felt it her duty to prevent strange people from coming near Tommy, but declined to let them pass by on the road unchallenged; and though they cherished all animals, they never allowed them to become a nuisance or bore those who cared less for them.

Baldy was also resigned and spoke his mind freely, much to Tommy’s chagrin.

As for Dogtown, it was jubilant to the barking point, especially among the lower classes, consisting of those dogs who, being in reduced circumstances, had been used to come shrinking and timid between dusk and dawn for castaway bones or swill-pail dainties.

Waddles was liberal minded upon such matters—as liberal as the law allows. Dog law says that no dog shall dig up a bone that another has buried; but all bones that lie abandoned and uncovered are public property and fair eating.

Waddles, being affluent, never ate swill, and only buried special bones to ripen, casting others about at random, often with scraps of flesh ungnawed; for this he was regarded in Dogtown as the people’s friend.

Lily, in coming, stopped this patronage. She had known want herself, in the days when she tramped with gypsies, so she ranged about, industriously burying everything she found for possible future use, and kept such a strict watch on all the outbuildings that the most ravenous cur dared not steal a lap of sour milk from the pig’s trough for fear of seeing those wide jaws gnashing in front of him; for Lily had the one bad trait of her race: she laid hold without warning.

So after all it was only Tommy who grieved for Lily. To him she stood for property rights, strength, and friendship, and for a time he was inconsolable.

“Let’s come home and see the twins have their supper; it won’t do any good for you to stay here and cry. Your eyes are swelled up like a frog’s, now,” said Anne, trying to lead Tommy away after Baldy and his shovel had disappeared.

“Supposin’ it was Waddles was dead, would you stop cryin’—the very same day—even if you were frogs?”

“Waddles! why that is entirely different; he is a person. There is no other dog like him,” and then Anne sat down suddenly on the tumble-down stone fence in sheer amazement at the possibility of mischance overtaking her little friend.

A friend he was, and she was entirely right—there was no other quite like him among sturdy, self-reliant, gentlemen dogs. He had been so long the companion of the House People that, without being of the objectionable, pampered, perfumed, spoon-fed type of lap dog who demands the care that a child alone should have, he really seemed to be, as Anne said, a person.

Waddles did not know a single taught trick; he could not hold sugar on his nose, like Miss Letty’s poodle, Hamlet; he could not sit up and beg, though he had a language of his own, part gesture, part speech, by which he could ask for anything that he could not get without aid.

In his frisky youth even he scorned the mere idea of jumping through a hoop, or the poodle trick of “saying his prayers.”

Yet there were few walls that he could not manage to get over or through, and he would put his paws upon his mistress’s knees and gaze into her face in unmistakable supplication.

“It’s a great responsibility having a dog like Waddles,” Anne had said one day, shortly after her brother was born, when she had given him half of her name, and stopped being Tommy-Anne, and there had been much talk about her new responsibility. “Do you know, mother, I believe Waddles thinks that I’m God, and it will be dreadful if I’m unkind and disappoint him.”

No, Waddles was untrained and untutored in the common sense of the words, but he “knew,” which was better; his method of treeing cats or coons in company with Miss Jule’s big Ben Uncas, and the fox terrier, Quick, though somewhat reprehensible, was a marvel of military tactics, and it was knowledge of this sort that made and kept him Mayor of Dogtown; for he was the one dog that no other had ever attacked or fought, so it was no wonder that Anne grew grave at the mere suggestion of losing him, though never dreaming that there was really trouble hovering about, and that, too, from a dog of the Happy Hall household and herself.

For a time after Lily’s departure everything was peaceful. Jack and Jill were fast growing able to play and indulge in the wrestling matches that make puppies quick-witted and strengthen their muscles.

Happy often superintended these bouts herself, stirring up first one pup and then the other, often aiding and protecting the under dog if too roughly vanquished. Anne soon discovered that these affairs were not merely aimless play upon Happy’s part, but a way she took for teaching the twins how to protect themselves.

The next step was to teach them to protect their food, and when one day Happy dragged a ripe and well-cleaned beef bone from its hiding-place, and deliberately threw it down between Jack and Jill, and they began a struggle for its possession, Anne in amazement rushed into the house to call the family, crying: “Do come out and see the queerest thing—Happy is teaching the pups to play ‘snatch bone’ exactly the same way as Waddles played it with Lumberlegs when he was a puppy. You’ll really have to see it to believe what I say.” It was more than true, for not only did they wrestle and snatch the bone from one another, seeking in turn to hide it in the grass under a few leaves, but when the frolic was fast turning to a pitched battle, and ludicrous baby growls mingled with flashing teeth from between drawn-up lips, then Happy gave a sharp “yap” that must have meant something very dreadful, for the pups instantly let go and drew apart with a most abject droop of the tail, while she seized the bone, and trotting off reburied it.

Though Waddles seldom forgot his dignity sufficiently to play with the twins, he allowed them to take morsels from his dish, and was always close at hand if their shrill cries told that they were in trouble, and the slightest look from Happy brought him to her aid.

Lumberlegs, on the contrary, delighted to gambol with them, and his clumsy bounds and imitations of their gestures usually ended in his overthrow, when he would lie on his back with a most idiotic grin upon his face, fanning the air with his paws, while the twins gnawed at his great tail with mock fierceness.

Now the race law for puppies and grown dogs is quite different, even as are those laws that govern childhood and manhood among House People. Actions that are tolerated and even encouraged in puppyhood are read as insults when done by a dog of two years, and bear a penalty.

In spite of Waddles’s instructions and warnings, Lumberlegs was either heedless of the law, often deliberately breaking it, or else from his size and strength felt himself superior to it; which it was Anne could never tell. Perhaps it was because he was unevenly developed, for he had all a man dog’s jealousy and craving for the exclusive attention of his owners, while he kept his baby playfulness and total disregard of food rights. So trouble befell one fine day, like rain from sudden clouds that no one has noticed gathering.

After it had happened Anne was continually remembering little things that might have given her warning.

Waddles had a favourite afternoon station on the end of the porch that commanded the front and barn roads, the front door, and the garden also if he turned his head. Suddenly Lumberlegs regularly appropriated this watch-tower, and his length being so great that there was no view from a back seat Waddles, after unavailing verbal remonstrance, was forced to lie upon the grass.

Waddles was the only dog that had been allowed in the dining room at meal times, when he sat quietly under the table at Anne’s feet. Soon Lumberlegs discovered a way of opening the door and he would hide under the table, lying at Tommy’s feet. As he was quiet, and Tommy declared that he made “a fine feet bench,” he was allowed to remain. Consequently Waddles was squeezed against the table’s claw legs and presently left his old place and lay disconsolately upon the door-mat.

When Lumberlegs came, a gift from Miss Jule, he was regarded as Tommy’s property; but when the novelty wore off, and Jack and Jill became counter attractions, he turned wholly to Anne to supply his needs both of food and affection, and became devotedly attached to her as big dogs usually are to only one person; while Anne, though faithful to Waddles, returned his devotion, for he was in many ways a noble dog.

Anne had insisted almost from her babyhood that one of her ancestors must have been an Indian, so fond she was of wild ways and things, and this liking did not decrease as she grew of an age to crave friends of her own race.