So began a merry interlude in the drabness of the Handsomebody regime. Mrs.
Handsomebody kept to her room for nearly three weeks, unable to put her
foot to the floor. On the first evening, she called us to her bedside; and,
while we stood in a row, bewildered before the phenomenon of seeing her
prostrate, she lectured us solemnly on the duties and responsibilities of
our position, and implored us not to make the period of her enforced
retirement a nightmare, because of our pranks. We promised, marvelling that
bed-clothes could be kept so tidy, and fervently wishing she would display
the knee that had been so severely "put out." It was a commonplace for Mrs.
Handsomebody's temper to be thus afflicted, but her knee, never.
When we returned to the kitchen, we found Mary Ellen sitting in a pensive
attitude. Her forefinger pressed against her knit brow, her stout ankles
crossed.
"The little dawg has been tellin' me a secret," she volunteered in
explanation, "a deep, dark secret. She's been tellin' me in a way of
spakin' that she's a lady-dawg, God help her."
"But how did she tell you, Mary Ellen? Did she speak out loud?" We were
breathless with excitement.
"She did not. I ast her, for I had me suspicion, if she was a lady-dawg an'
I sez--'If yez are wag yer tail three times,' an' the words was scarce off
me tongue, whin she wagged her tail three times."
It was a marvel. Oh, these were going to be great days!
"If you're a lady-dog, wag your tail three times," I ordered, squatting to
peer into the sagacious brown eyes.
Three times the stocky tail thumped the floor.
Then Angel put the question, and was answered with equal promptitude.
It was The Seraph's turn. With an insinuating smile he said: "If you are a
gennelman dog wag your tail fwee times."
But before there was time for so much as one wag, Mary Ellen caught the
too-eager tail in a restraining grasp.
"Now have done wid your nonsinse," she commanded. "Ye'll have the pore
crature that worried it'll set up barkin', an' if the misthress did know,
there be's a dawg in the house, she'd likely just throw a fit an' die."
"Is it a vewy barkable dog?" queried The Seraph.
"All dogs is barkable," said Mary Ellen, "and what we'll have to do is to
kape her as quate as possible and pray that her owner'll come along this
way, for turn her out I will not. It's easy seein' she's a pet be the ways
of her."
"It says 'Giftie' on her collar," Angel announced, separating the short,
shaggy coat to read. "That must be her name. Hello, Giftie! Sit up,
Giftie!"
So Giftie she was, and, for a long three weeks, our joy and our delight.
Was ever little body so full of spirit and the pride of life? The kitchen
became her own domain where the three of us fought for the position of her
most abject slave. Even Mary Ellen could scarcely work for watching her
antics with an old stocking, which she pretended was a rat. Once she caught
a live mouse and set us all shouting. Mary Ellen, in her excitement, upset
a gravy-boat of hot gravy, and The Seraph slipped and sat down in it, and
Giftie gambolling, mouse in mouth, ran through it and tracked it over the
freshly scrubbed boards. If she had been a tigress with her prey she could
not have been more ferocious with the mouse. She snarled at it: she worried
it: she threw it up in the air and caught it: she laid it on the scullery
floor and rolled on it: and when, finally, it ceased to squirm beneath her,
she lay quite still, gazing pensively up at us with liquid eyes, and only
now and then twitching her hind-quarters to remind her victim that she was
still on the job.
One never-to-be-forgotten day she rollicked into the kitchen proudly
carrying Mrs. Handsomebody's solemn black shoe, which had been standing
with its mate beneath Mrs. Handsomebody's bed. Before our horrified eyes,
she worried it till the shoe-laces cracked about her head; threw it up and
caught it, as she had the mouse; then taking it to her own bed in the
scullery, she laid it there and rolled on it.
When Mary Ellen had wrested the shoe from Giftie, she crept upstairs, her
heart in her mouth, and restored it to its place beneath the bed.
"It was a marvel," she said afterwards, "how the scallywag did what she did
widout wakenin' _her_, for there was the mistress sleepin' on the broad of
her back, and her two shoes, and her bed-socks scattered over the flure,
and the pot of cold crame knocked off the chair at the head of her bed, and
the half of it et. It's mesilf will dance for joy whin that little tormint
gets took away."
Inquiries were made of all the errand boys, but not one had heard of a lost
dog. We came to dread the sound of the door-bell lest it should herald some
determined grown-up come to snatch our treasure from us. Mr. Watlin, the
butcher's young man, and Mary Ellen's favoured "follower" of the moment,
took a lively interest in the affair. He was of the opinion that if Mrs.
Handsomebody once saw the dog nothing would induce her to send it away. And
he brought offerings of raw meat in his pocket to make her plump and
glossy. Giftie grew plumper and glossier every day.
Then, when two weeks had passed, she achieved the crowning triumph of her
stay with us. It was a heavy morning of dense November fog, and the gas was
still burning in the dining-room when we came down to breakfast. Mary Ellen
did not bring us our porridge, as usual, neither did Giftie run in to greet
us; so, after a moment's impatient wriggling in our chairs, we went to the
kitchen to investigate. Giftie was nowhere in sight. Mary Ellen sat in an
attitude of complete abandon, by the dresser, her apron over her head, her
arms hanging loosely at her sides. Was Giftie dead? Had her owner come to
fetch her? What horror had overcast the sun? We deluged her with questions,
pulling the apron off her head, and dragging her from the chair.
"Och, it's a terror she is," Mary Ellen said, at last. "Come wid me to the
scullery an' ye'll see what she's got in the bed wid her."
There was not much light in the scullery so we could not at first
distinguish what lay on the mat beside Giftie. It moved; it snuffled;
no--_they_ moved; _they_ snuffled. There were three of them. All at once it
burst upon us that they were puppies--her puppies--our puppies--one apiece!
We flopped on the floor beside her. She darted from her bed--licked our
hands--snapped at our ankles--ran back to them--and, finally tremulous with
excitement, allowed us to take them in our arms (The Seraph wrapped his in
the skirt of his fresh holland smock) and sit blissfully in a row.
We stroked the soft licked fur of their glossy coats; we examined their
tiny sharp black nails; their blindness only endeared them the more to us.
There we were found by Mr. Watlin.
"'Ere's a picnic," he said. "'Ere's a bloomin' picnic." He caught up the
nearest puppy, and turned it over in an experienced hand. "Tiles must be
cut," he added.
"Tails cut! Oh, no," I expostulated, "Giftie's tail isn't cut. Please
don't."
"All terriers should 'ave their tiles cut," said Mr. Watlin, firmly. "If
the mother dog's tile isn't cut, is that any reason w'y 'er hoffspring
should be disfigured in a like manner? Now's the time."
"But it'll hurt," pleaded The Seraph. Do you do it wif a knife?"
"I _bites_ 'em orf," replied Mr. Watlin, laconically, "an' it don't 'urt a
bit."
"In this world," he went on, "a lot depends on the way you does a thing.
F'rinstance, when I kill a lamb or a steer, do I kill 'im brutally? Not at
all. I runs 'im up an' down the slaughter yard to get 'is circulation up--I
strokes 'im on the neck, an' tells 'im wot a fine feller 'e is, till 'e's
in such good spirits that 'e tikes the killin' as a joke. Just a part of
the gime, as it were. Sime with these 'ere pups. They'd like 'aving their
tiles bit orf by me."
We looked at the puppies doubtfully. It was hard to believe that they would
really like it, and we were relieved when Mary Ellen broke in--
"They will not be cut, nor bit, nor interfered wid in anny way. If Giftie's
owner likes a long tail on her, he'd want a long tail on her puppies
wouldn't he? That stands to reason, Mr. Watlin, don't it? and the owner may
walk in here anny day."
How we hated that nebulous owner! And now another cloud loomed on our
horizon. Mrs. Handsomebody was getting better. She had sat up on a chair by
the bedside; she had, with Mary Ellen's help, walked across the room; she
had, all alone, walked down the hallway; she had come to the head of the
stairs. She was like the man in the ghost story, who, fresh from his grave,
called to his wife--snugly sleeping above--"Mary, I'm at the foot of the
stairs.... Mary, I'm half way up." We, too, shuddered in anticipation. And
Mary Ellen was almost as nervous as we, for hers was the responsibility.
The puppies were more entrancing every day. Tiny slips of dewy blue showed
between their furry eyelids. They learned to walk, and roll over, and to
right themselves after being turned over by their mother's playful paws. We
were squatting on the floor very busy with them, when Mary Ellen entered,
round-eyed with fear.
"'Tis herself is in the dining-room," she gasped.
"Not Mrs. Handsomebody?"
"Sorra a thing else. Put them pups in their basket and come out and shut
the dure. Ye'd better go into the yard and be at some quate game. Oh,
Lord--" and she hurried back to her mistress.
This time we were safe, but there was tomorrow ahead, with certain
discovery.
Mr. Watlin, propped in the open doorway, brought his ingenious mind to bear
upon the problem.
"Now if Mrs. 'Andsomebody could be put under an obligation to that little
dog, she'd probably tike it right into 'er 'eart and 'ome. If that little
dog, f'rinstance, should save Mrs. 'Andsomebody from drowning--does she
ever go in bathing?"
"_Likely_, at _her_ age, in _December_!" sneered Mary Ellen. "Try again."
"We might hold her under water in the bath-tub till Giftie would fish her
out," suggested Angel.
It was a colourful spectacle to visualize, and we dallied with it a space
before abandoning it as impracticable. It seemed too much to hope that Mrs.
Handsomebody, the bath-tub and Giftie could all be assembled at the
critical moment.
But Mr. Watlin was not to be rebuffed. "Then there's burglars," he went on.
"Suppose Mrs. 'Andsomebody's valuables was to be rescued from a burglar for
'er. She wouldn't be able to do enough for a little dog that 'ad chased 'im
out of this very scullery, f'rinstance."