I FIND A SECOND FRIEND
I still kept to the Drive, and trotted along well up into the hundredth
streets. My plan was to have some one find me with the collar on,
which undoubtedly had an address on it--but I must not be found near
enough to Mr. Boston’s home to be returned that night, for I might be
ignominiously turned out into the darkness of the street.
Now for another poor person. If a rich one found me, into an automobile
or a taxi would I go, and presto!--the house of the indignant dog I had
robbed.
I am not defending my action. I was a naughty, mischievous dog to steal
another dog’s collar. I might even be called a thief, but for the fact
that I intended to return the collar with me inside it, when I trusted
to my native wit to do the rest.
I had better leave the west side, and turn toward the east. I dashed
up the hill past the Home for Incurables, made for the big College of
New York that I remembered from my former visit, slipped down the slope
behind it, and found myself in the kind of district I wanted.
Here was a nice unfashionable avenue--New York certainly has a great
number of wide streets--plenty of noise, and many people walking
about, lots of well-lighted shops with everything under the sun in
them, and a good many persons with kind faces.
I avoided the very young, the very old--there weren’t many of these,
anybody that was too gay or too dull, or too dirty and poor-looking.
I wouldn’t mind poor people so much, if they would keep clean. The
most of them are so careless in their personal habits, that no
self-respecting dog wants to live with them.
I chose a respectable-looking coloured woman who was coming out of a
nice-looking meat shop. Her shoes were bright and neat, and by the look
of her hands, I judged she was a washerwoman. She had been out working
by the day, and she was going to have a good hot meat supper in which I
would join her.
Sidling close up to her, I whined gently and held up a beseeching paw.
She gazed down at me with a lovely benevolent expression. “Why,
doggie,” she said, “what’s the matter?”
I squeezed a little closer, and licked her clean, cotton dress.
I am not considered really beautiful, but I am a very well-bred dog,
and most women say I have a nice way with me when I choose.
“Poor little fellow,” she said, “I believe you’re lost, and I just
happened to see you.”
I didn’t say anything to this, though I might have told her that most
things are arranged. They don’t happen.
“But perhaps you knew me,” she went on. “Maybe I’ve worked for the lady
that owns you.”
Maybe she had. I didn’t know.
“And you smelt my tracks and followed me,” she continued. “I’ve heard
that some dogs are mighty clever. Bless your little heart. You want
me to take you to your home. Come right along with Ellen, and we’ll
telephone to the address I see on your collar. I’ve just got a nickel
left.”
I felt badly to have her spend money on me, still it does us all good
to be benevolent--dogs and human beings too--so I said nothing, and
followed her to the telephone booth in a drug store.
I thought I would die laughing to hear her telephoning. “Is this
Riverside twenty twenty?” she asked.
Yes, it was.
“Oh! ma’am, I’ve found your dog.”
Of course I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but I
guessed what it was. When she said, “But your name is on the collar,” I
listened anxiously for the next.
“But,” said my nice coloured woman, “doesn’t the collar go with the
dog?”
Something else followed, then my Ellen said, “I did notice it was too
big for him. It’s way down over his shoulders. What do you say?”
A long silence came after this. Ellen was listening intently. Finally
she hung up the receiver, and looked down at me with a mystified air.
“Poor lady--she seems all upset. She said something about a dog
thief’s dog, and a collar being stolen. Perhaps she has two dogs.”
Perhaps she is going to have, I thought, but of course I said nothing.
“We’ll go see her in the morning,” said Ellen. “I have to work near
there, and now we’ll go home, and have some supper.”
I was not too tired to jump up, and lick her kind, old fingers. Then
she led the way to her home, which was in an apartment-house on this
same broad avenue. We tugged up six flights of stairs, and while we
were going up she said, “I s’pose you’ve been accustomed to elevators,
little dog. Poor folks can’t have all the nice things the rich have.”
There was nothing to be said to this, except to give her silent
sympathy, and stand back while she unlocked her door, and let herself
into a neat little set of rooms. She had two bed-rooms and a kitchen,
and her son, who was a sidewalk usher in a fashionable hotel, lived
with her.
The tiny kitchen was cute. It had a gas stove, a table, two
rocking-chairs and two windows. It was just big enough to turn round
in. The son, Robert Lee, came up the stairs just after we did, and she
hastened to tell him my story.
He laughed heartily, throwing back his head, and showing every tooth he
possessed--those teeth of negroes aren’t as white as they look. It’s
the contrast of their dark skin that makes them seem to have whiter
teeth than white people.
He slipped the collar off my neck, and laid it on a shelf. “It’s a
bull-terrier’s collar,” he said, “and this fellow is a fox-terrier,
and ought to have a narrower one. I know, ’cause I see the rich folks’
dogs at the hotel. Some one has slipped the wrong collar on this
fellow. Yes, take him to that address in the morning. Maybe there’ll be
a reward.”
This pleased me, and I licked his nice, dark hands. Then we had a
dandy supper, and I had a good long drink of fresh water--my favourite
beverage. I don’t care much for milk. While Ellen washed the dishes,
Robert Lee sat in one of the rocking-chairs and played on his banjo
while he sang to her about “Mighty Lak a Rose,” and “I Want to Go to
Tokio,” and “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.”
After a while, he put away his banjo, and we all went to bed.
I slept on the old coloured woman’s couch. She started me on a piece of
carpet by the gas stove, but as soon as she was asleep, I sneaked up
and lay beside her feet. I saw no earthly reason why I should not do
so. I had licked my paws quite clean, and I had no fleas, and I loved a
comfortable bed high up, and hated a draughty floor.
In the morning very early, for charwomen must work, while ladies sleep,
my nice Ellen got up, roused her son who was sleeping the pig sleep of
all healthy young males, and prepared a nice, smelly breakfast--bacon
and warmed-over sausage, and two fried eggs, and hot rolls and
perfectly scrumptious coffee with real cream from a bottle outside the
window.
Rich people say that working people don’t live well. Poor people that
have brains enough to work, can live well if they choose, and they
mostly do choose. I think they have lots more fun than rich people.
They don’t whine and snarl so much, and they laugh harder and oftener,
and cry louder and longer.
Ellen would have been frightfully bored on Riverside Drive, or Fifth or
Park Avenues. She was one of the happiest women I ever saw, and Robert
Lee, her son, whistled all the time. He had a good mother, and a nice
molasses shade of girl whose picture he carried in his heart pocket,
and he had good wages and plenty to eat, and no enemies, and he didn’t
drink, and he had no heavy social duties.
Well, Ellen had her three cups of coffee, and I had a perfectly
stunning feed; then Robert Lee went to do his sidewalk posing in front
of his hotel, and finally, about eight o’clock, we took a cross-town
street and walked toward Riverside Drive.
I love interesting situations, and it nearly tickled me to death to
imagine what was going to happen. Poor old Ellen was so pleased in
what she called my pleasure in going home. Some dogs would have run
away before they would have faced the lady who thought me the dog of a
thief, but I trusted to luck and pressed on.
Ellen had too much sense to put a string on me. I jumped and frisked
about her, and that young Boston bull’s collar swung and twisted about
my neck. By the way, it was a very valuable collar, with fine imitation
turquoises in it.
Finally we emerged upon the Drive. The Hudson was more glorious in the
morning sunlight than it had been in the starlight of the night before.
Poor Ellen, I thought to myself, here is a chance to whine. These rich
people have everything--the big houses, the fine river, the view of the
hills and trees over in New Jersey, but will she complain?--Not a bit
of it. Ellen doesn’t care for scenery, and she finds the Drive windy.
She likes her snug, warm rooms, and the neighbours of her own position
in life.
We entered a specially grand apartment-house with a marble entrance,
and plenty of mirrors and palms, and we went up in the elevator to the
seventh story. Ellen pressed a bell, and a maid with her cap over one
ear opened the door.
She stared at us, and said no one was up.
Ellen wasn’t surprised. She knew the ways of well-to-do white folks.
“I’ll wait,” she said patiently.
We sat down, and waited and waited. The first to appear was the Boston
bull. He came yawning out of a bed-room, turned stiff-legged when he
smelt me, hipped four times round the swell reception room where we
were, then emboldened by my detached air, came up, smelt his collar on
my neck, bristled, and closed with me.
As he had too much fat and too little wind, I easily floored him, and
such a gurgling--I thought he’d choke to death with rage and fright.
A lovely stout lady in a pretty dressing-gown came flying from one
room, and a lean, hard-looking athlete of a man from another.
“Oh! my precious Beanie,” wailed the lady. Really, the New York women
do give their dogs sickening names. This fellow, I learned, was Baked
Beans, and he had just about as much waist as a bean.
“Oh! you idiot,” growled the man.
Baked Beans was pretending I had nearly killed him. I sized up my
audience, then I walked up to the man, crouched humbly before him, and
put a protesting paw on one of his bed-room slippers.
He must have stood six feet four in his pajamas. I threw him one upward
glance. He understood.
We dogs divide man and womankind into two classes. Those who understand
us, and those who don’t.
He bent over me, slipped the silly collar from my neck, and twisted it
thoughtfully round and round in his fingers. Then he began to laugh,
and I thought he would never stop.
“Rudolph,” said the lady, who was hugging the bull, “Rudolph, do stop.
You get on my nerves. And what do you see to laugh about? A nasty,
fighting, street dog bursts into our apartment, bullies poor Beanie,
and you admire him for it. I call it brute force. Now, woman, tell me
your business.”
Ellen was smiling indulgently. She was a Southern negress, and had
infinite indulgence for the whims of fine ladies. She told her story in
an honest, straightforward manner, and the man believed her; but the
woman didn’t.
“How much do you want?” she asked coldly, when Ellen had finished.
“You needn’t give me anything, ma’am,” said Ellen sweetly. “It’s a nice
morning, and I’ve had a walk before I goes to my work.”
“My dear,” said the gentleman turning to his wife, “you will get cold,
go back to bed, and I will arrange this affair.”
“Come, Beanie darling,” said the lady, and she tugged Beanie off in her
arms, he looking over her shoulder as if anxious to be in at the death.
The gentleman sat down and asked Ellen to repeat her story. He
cross-examined her, then he cross-examined me, asking me questions
exactly as if I were a human being.
“This is the crux of the whole matter,” he remarked, “How did that
collar get off our dog’s neck to the neck of this strange dog--who, by
the way, is a thoroughbred. Our maid said that there seemed to be no
man about, only a white dog running.”
The collar had fallen to the floor. I gambolled up to it, ran my head
through it, pawed it off, and went back to the man.
“Come up here,” he said patting his knee, and I sprang up, gave him one
of my most intelligent glances, and we were friends.
“You rogue,” he said, “you’re a dog of character, and probably a
Bohemian.”
“I reckon he’s American, sir,” said Ellen kindly. “He knows all we say
to him. I’ll take him, if you don’t want him. I’d like a nice dog.”
The gentleman smiled, and said, “Let him choose. I’ll give him a
week’s trial. Now, dog, is it go or stay?”
It was stay, of course. I ran to Ellen, licked her hands and even the
face that she bent over me, but I kept looking backward at my new owner.
“You must have something for your trouble,” he murmured, and he went to
his room for his purse, and coming back, slipped a bill in her hand. It
must have been a big one, for she sneaked a glance at it, then turned
back as if to protest.
He waved her toward the door, then he glanced toward his wife’s room,
as if he were about to go to it.
“Why anticipate trouble,” he muttered, and signing to me to follow, he
entered his own quarters.