In his pain and anger and humiliation he turned blindly to Mrs. Granger,
the charming little lady who never laughed at any one. He couldn’t get
to her fast enough; he strode on through the mud in the steady downpour
of rain, simply longing to see her, and to hear her soft, gracious
voice, and to be within the shelter of her friendly home.
That card was still in his pocket; he took it out, and as he walked
along, tore it into bits and strewed them behind him. They fell into
puddles, where they would lie to be trampled on, those words he had
written--a suitable end for them.
He pushed open the gate of Mrs. Granger’s garden, and was very much
comforted by Sandy’s ecstatic welcome. Dogs _did_ know. They appreciated
it when you meant well; they were not suspicious, not mocking. When you
gave them something they accepted it in good faith.
He went on toward the house, walking rapidly, impatient to get in there
to the gentle serenity of Mrs. Granger’s presence. He rang the bell, and
directly the parlor-maid opened the door he knew he was not going to
have peace and solace.
Something had gone wrong. He could hear Leroy’s voice raised in a loud,
forlorn bellow, and Mrs. Granger’s voice, tearful and trembling, and
Captain MacGregor’s voice, with a slightly exasperated note in it. He
entered the sitting room, and there was Mrs. Granger, weeping, and Leroy
sobbing. Sandy began to bark.
“Oh, Mr. Anderson!” cried Mrs. Granger. “How can you let him do that?
Oh, please keep him quiet!”
Anderson put the dog outside, and then returned.
“But what’s the matter?” he asked.
“Leroy’s been bitten by a m-mad d-dog!” cried Mrs. Granger.
“Was _not_ a mad dog!” Leroy asserted.
“See! Here on his leg!” she went on. “And he never told me! It happened
late yesterday!”
“There’s no reason to assume that the dog was mad,” interrupted the
captain.
“It was! Animals adore Leroy! Only a rabid dog would dream of biting
him!”
“Was _not_ a rabid dog,” Leroy insisted sullenly.
“Well, see here!” said Anderson. “If you think--if you’re worried--why
not have his leg cauterized?”
“Oh, I can’t!” she cried. “My child burned with red-hot irons!”
Leroy began to bellow at this inhuman suggestion, and Mrs. Granger
clasped him in her arms.
“Don’t cry, darling!” she sobbed. “Mother won’t let them hurt you!” And
she looked at Captain MacGregor and Mr. Anderson with unutterable
reproach.
They were silent for a time.
“Well, see here!” Anderson suggested. “If you could find the dog,
and--keep it under observation for a few days--”
This idea appealed to the child.
“Sure!” he said. “I’ll find him, mom. You just let me alone, and I’ll
find him for you, all right!”
“You said you couldn’t remember what the dog was like.”
“Yes, I know. But I remember the street where it was, an’ I’ll go back
there to-morrow,” Leroy declared. “I could stay out o’ school jist in
the mornin’ and jist--ferret it out. I got lots of clews. An’ I bet
you--”
“I’ll go with you now,” said Anderson.
The agitated mother didn’t even thank him.
“Perhaps that would be a good idea,” she admitted. “You might try it,
anyhow, and see.”
So Leroy was fortified against the rain in oilskins and rubbers, and he
and Mr. Anderson set forth together in quest of the dog. The small boy
was highly pleased with the adventure; he did not often have an
opportunity to frolic in the rain, and he made the most of it,
caracoling before Anderson like a sportive colt. Sandy, too, would have
enjoyed it, but he was tied up.
“One dog at a time,” said Anderson. “Now, young feller, let’s hear about
it.”
“Aw, it was nothin’,” Leroy replied with admirable nonchalance. “Jist a
dog ran up an’ bit me. I mean, I was runnin’, an’ I guess I stepped on
his paw an’ he bit me.”
“Did you tell your mother you stepped on the dog?”
“I dunno what all I told her,” Leroy admitted. “Anyway, what’s it
matter? Had to do somethin’ to keep her quiet.”
Anderson considered that it was not his place to rebuke this child, and
he let the disrespect pass.
“Where did it happen?”
“Long ways from here, all right!” said the boy, triumphantly.
He spoke no more than the truth. It was a very long way. They went on
and on, down long, quiet suburban streets, lined with dripping trees and
houses with no signs of life. They went on and on.
At first Leroy was talkative and cheerful, and found great satisfaction
in splashing in puddles, but as time went on he grew silent, and tramped
through the puddles more as a matter of principle than through
enjoyment.
“What was the name of the street?” asked Anderson.
“Well, I don’t know,” the boy answered, “but I guess I’d know it if I
saw it. Somewheres around here, it was. Might be around the next
corner.”
They went round the corner, and there was a candy store.
“That’s it!” Leroy announced. “It’s open, too.”
Mr. Anderson said nothing, but walked steadily forward, and Leroy
trotted by his side.
“They sure did have good lollypops in there,” observed Leroy. “Best I
ever tasted.”
Still no response from the adult, possessor of all power and wealth.
Leroy sighed. And Anderson turned to look at him, and discovered a wet
and not very clean face upturned to his, with brown eyes very like
Sandy’s. Poor little kid, tramping along so bravely in his oilskins! He
looked tired, too.
“All right!” said Anderson. “We’d better go back and get a few
lollypops.”
After that Leroy went on, much encouraged in spirit.
“Here’s the street!” he cried at last. “The lil dog ran out o’ one of
those houses--I don’t know which one.”
Mr. Anderson rang the bell of the first house. The occupants owned no
dog, never had, and never intended so to do. In the second house he was
confronted by a very disagreeable old lady. She admitted that she had a
dog, and she said, with unction, that her dog could and would bite any
persons unlawfully trespassing on her property, as was any dog’s right.
“I dare say Rover did bite the boy,” she suggested, “if he came in here
trampling and stampling all over my flower beds. And serve him right, I
say!”
“I did not!” said Leroy, indignantly. “And that’s not the dog, Mr.
Anderson. I can see him out the window. He’s a police dog, and my dog
was a little one.”
They proceeded to the next house. Nobody came to the door at all. There
was only one more house left on the street.
“Well, I hope the right dog’s in there,” said Leroy, “but--” He paused,
then he laid his hand on Anderson’s sleeve. “Most any lil dog would
_do_,” he said, very low, “for _her_.”
Mr. Anderson was about to protest sternly against such a dishonest and
immoral suggestion, but somehow he didn’t. The child’s hand looked so
very small, and his manner was so trusting. He said nothing at all,
simply walked up the path to this last house.
He rang the bell, and the door was opened with startling suddenness by a
little man with spectacles and a neatly pointed white beard. He looked
like a professor, and he was a professor--of Romance Languages--and
because of his scholarly unworldliness, he had been cheated and swindled
so many times that he had become fiercely suspicious. He glared.
“This boy has been bitten by a dog,” Mr. Anderson explained. “And we
want to find the dog, to see--”
“Ha!” said the little man. “And what has this to do with me, pray?”
“I thought perhaps you had a dog here--”
The professor folded his arms.
“Very well!” said he. “I have. And what of it?”
“If you’ll let us see the dog--”
“Aha!” said the professor. “I see! A blackmailing scheme! You wish to
see my dog. You will then cause this child to identify the dog as the
one which bit him, in order that you may collect damages. A ve-ry
pret-ty little scheme, I must admit!”
Anderson had had a singularly trying day, and he was very weary of this
quest, anyhow.
“Nothing of the sort!” he said curtly. “If you’ll be good enough to let
us see your dog--or if you’ll give me your assurance that the animal is
perfectly healthy--”
“Don’t you give him a penny, Joseph!” cried a quavering female voice
from the dark depths of the hall.
The professor laughed ironically.
“Ve-ry pret-ty!” he repeated. “But you may as well understand, once and
for all, that I absolutely refuse to allow you to see my dog, or to give
you any assurance of any kind whatsoever.”
And nothing could move him. Mr. Anderson argued with him with as much
tact and politeness as he could manage just at that time, but in vain.
“See here!” he said at last. “Let me see the dog, and if it’s the right
one, I’ll _buy_ it. Now will you believe--”
But the professor would not believe until Anderson had signed a document
which he drew up, solemnly promising that, if the dog were identified by
Leroy as the dog which had bitten him, he, Winchell Anderson, would
purchase the said dog for the sum of twenty-five dollars.
Then, and then only, was the dog brought into the room. And Leroy
instantly, loudly and fervently asserted that it was _the_ dog. By this
time Mr. Anderson was perfectly willing to believe him. He paid the
money and stooped to pick up the dog, a small animal, of what might be
called the spaniel type.
It snapped at him. He could not pick it up, because on the next attempt
his hand was bitten. At last, upon his paying in advance for the
telephone call, the professor summoned a taxi. Mr. Anderson could not
get the dog into the taxi, but Leroy had no trouble at all with it. It
seemed to like Leroy.
They rode home in silence, because every time Anderson uttered a word
the animal growled and struggled in the boy’s arms.
They reached Mrs. Granger’s house, and while Leroy ran ahead with the
dog in his arms, Anderson delayed a minute to pay the taxi with the last
bill remaining in his pockets. Then he followed. It had been a costly
and a wearisome quest, but Mrs. Granger’s relief and gratitude would be
sufficient reward.
In the doorway of the sitting room he paused a moment, smiling to
himself at the scene before him. Leroy was down on his knees, playing
with this quite unexpected and delightful new dog, and Mrs. Granger
knelt beside him, one arm about her son’s neck.
Captain MacGregor was there, but in a corner, so that one need not
consider him in the picture--the peaceful lamp-lit room, the gentle
mother and her child.
“I’m very glad--” he began, when, at the sound of his voice, the dog
sprang up and rushed at him, and was caught by Leroy just in the nick of
time. He growled threateningly.
“I guess I’d better tie him up,” said Leroy. “He doesn’t like Mr.
Anderson.”
“Why, how very strange!” Mrs. Granger exclaimed.
Leroy did tie him up to the leg of a table.
“But why doesn’t the poor little doggie like Mr. Anderson?” pursued Mrs.
Granger, and there was something in her voice that dismayed the young
man.
“I don’t know,” he replied, briefly.
“It’s very strange,” she remarked. “Very! But sit down, Mr. Anderson.
Perhaps you were just a little bit rough in handling him--without
meaning to be.”
“No, he wasn’t!” Leroy asserted, indignantly. “He--”
At this point the dog broke loose, flew at Anderson, and would have
bitten him if Anderson had not prevented him--with his foot.
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Granger. “Oh, Mr. Anderson, how could you! You kicked
the poor little doggie!”
“I--I simply pushed him--with my foot,” said Anderson. “He’s a
bad-tempered little brute.”
“Dogs are never bad-tempered unless they’re badly treated,” Mrs. Granger
declared, with severity. “They always know a friend from a foe.”
“All right!” the young man agreed. “Then I’m afraid I’m a foe.” He
turned toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll be getting
along. I’m--I’m tired. Good evening!”
“Good evening!” said Mrs. Granger and Captain MacGregor in unison.
She let him go! He opened the front door and stepped out into the rain
again, and never in his life had he felt so bitter, so disappointed, so
cruelly, intolerably depressed. After all he had done, she let him go
like this! Not even a word of thanks. Poor little doggie, eh?
Halfway down the path he heard a shout; it was Leroy, rushing after him
bareheaded through the rain.
“Say!” he shouted. “You’re--”
Words failed him, and he stretched out his hand, a rough, warm little
hand, wet from the rain, sticky from lollypops. Yet Anderson was very
glad to clasp it tight.
“Good-by, old fellow!” he said.
“Good-by, old fellow, yourself!” answered Leroy.
And he sat on the gatepost, watching, and waving his hand as Anderson
went down the road in the rainy dusk.