"What jolly stables!" Peggy cried, breathing herself more freely since
the imminent discovery of Diogenes was a danger past. They had met no
one in the road, had been seen by no one from the house. "You will be
quite happy here, Diogenes. You must be very good, and give no trouble,
mind."
Diogenes, who was engaged on an inspection of his temporary quarters,
disregarded these injunctions; he was snuffling round for rats. Peggy
looked at Mr Musgrave. By a strange coincidence Mr Musgrave was
looking at Peggy, looking with a close and curious scrutiny.
"You _are_ kind," she said. "I can never thank you."
Her gratitude had the effect of inclining Mr Musgrave towards a greater
kindliness; but, since he had undertaken to perform the sole service
that presented itself as practicable, he could bethink him of nothing
kinder, and so modestly deprecated her thanks.
"If Diogenes had been shot," she said, and shivered, "it would have made
me very unhappy. I'm unhappy enough as it is. I hate the thought of
losing him. I can't bear to think of never seeing him in the future."
To hide the sudden rush of tears which she realised would be as
embarrassing for John Musgrave to witness as for her to shed before him,
she dropped on her knees in the straw and drew Diogenes to her and put
her arms about his neck.
"Oh, Diogenes, my poor dear?" she sobbed. "Why ever did you do it?
I've got to let you go, Diogenes. I shan't see you any more, ever.
We'll never go for walks together again. If I'd only been with him,"
she said, lifting to John Musgrave her tear-dimmed eyes, "it wouldn't
have happened."
John Musgrave, with the scene of his wrecked china, and Diogenes
standing triumphant amid the wreckage, with Peggy, dismayed and
helpless, beside him, had a passing doubt whether her presence would
have availed in preventing the tragedy. But, with those upturned,
tear-filled eyes appealing for his sympathy, to remind her that her
authority was sometimes in default was a brutality of which he was
incapable.
"I am exceedingly sorry," he said gently, "for your distress. I wish I
could help you."
"But you are helping me," she cried. "You have taken such a load off my
mind. I daresay in time I'll get used to being without him. But he was
such a--chum."
As she knelt almost at his feet, with her arms about the ugly brute from
which she was so loth to separate, she presented a picture at once so
appealing and pathetic that Mr Musgrave found himself struggling with
all manner of absurd impulses in his very earnest and not unnatural
desire to see her grief change to gladness, and the tears melt away in
smiles. He had the same feeling of uncomfortable distress in witnessing
her trouble as he experienced over the lesser but more assertive
troubles of John Sommers. Her tears hurt him.
"I suppose," he said, with a certain halting indecision of manner, "we
couldn't, perhaps, find a home for him somewhere not too far away--
somewhere, in fact, near enough for you to see him occasionally? I
wonder... Perhaps that might be managed."
Peggy brightened visibly and looked up at him with such a light of hope
in her eyes that Mr Musgrave, from thinking that this might be managed,
finally decided that it must be managed; that he, in short, must manage
it. This resolve once firmly established in his mind, his thoughts
busied themselves with ways and means for the safe and convenient
disposal of Diogenes. But the only way which presented itself was so
disturbing to Mr Musgrave that, after first considering it, he paused
to reflect, and looking upon Diogenes, and having very clearly in mind
the great personal inconvenience that would result from such a course,
he promptly rejected it. Having rejected it, finally, as he believed,
he paused again for reflection; and looking this time not upon Diogenes
but straight into those clear, hopeful eyes, which seemed to look to him
with such a perfect confidence in his ability to solve this difficulty
that to disappoint her expectation seemed cruel after having raised her
hopes, Mr Musgrave felt it imperative on him to reconsider the matter.
After a somewhat protracted silence, he said: "Do you think it would be
possible for me to keep him?"
Peggy was so amazed at this proposal, which in her wildest moments she
had not conceived, that she released Diogenes and stood up slowly,
fixing upon John Musgrave a look so charged with gratitude and
admiration and an emotion which partook of neither of these qualities,
but which was so expressive of itself as to move Mr Musgrave to a
desire to house Diogenes, or any other beast, in order to oblige her.
She approached and put her two hands into his, and, oddly, John Musgrave
did not feel embarrassed. He held the small hands firmly, and looked
gravely into the earnest face.
"I never thought of that," she said. "I never thought of anything half
so good as that. I don't know what to say... It doesn't seem fair to
let you do it. I expect he'll be an awful nuisance for a time."
Mr Musgrave was very certain that he would be a nuisance; but he was
warming to the business, and felt equal to any undertaking with that
soft look in the grey eyes melting his reluctance and the small hands
gripping his with such eager warmth.
"I don't suppose we should get through without a little trouble," he
answered, smiling. "It will certainly be necessary to keep him for some
weeks on the chain. I could take him for a run every day--in the early
morning, and after dusk. The greatest difficulty I foresee is in the
matter of his identity. I should not like to annoy Mr Chadwick. It
seems acting not quite properly towards him."
"Uncle would be as grateful as I am," Peggy assured him, "if he knew.
He hated the thought of having Diogenes destroyed. Couldn't we disguise
him somehow--paint him? I believe he could be dyed."
"I'll take him into Rushleigh and see what can be contrived," he
replied. "And, anyway, if necessary he can be sent away later. For the
present I will adopt him. And--and any time you wish to see him you can
come in and take him off the chain."
Peggy grasped his hands more tightly.
"You are so kind, so very kind," she said. "I will never forget. I
wish there was something I could do for you."
She looked so earnest in expressing this wish so really anxious to prove
her gratitude, that Mr Musgrave felt himself sufficiently rewarded for
the service he was rendering. The charge of a dog, even of a dog with
such a record as Diogenes, was after, all no superhuman undertaking.
"You overestimate the service," he said. "There is really no need for
you to feel under any obligation."
But Peggy would not allow this.
"Once," she said slowly, taking her hands from his and moving a pace or
two away, "you asked me to do something to oblige you--and I refused;
refused because I saw no reason, I told you, for complying with the
request." She suddenly smiled as she met his quiet scrutiny, and made a
slight gesture with her hand in the direction of the dog. "You might
quite as aptly apply that argument in this case; there really isn't any
reason why you should oblige me now."
"Not so," he interrupted. "The reason lies in my wish to oblige you."
Peggy nodded.
"That is a reason I also have discovered," she said. "I can give the
promise now which you asked me for on Christmas Eve--do you remember?...
about the smoking... because the argument I used then doesn't hold any
longer. I wish," she added, "that I had given the promise at the time."
"Thank you," John Musgrave returned quietly.
It was a curious fact, in consideration of how objectionable the
practice of smoking in women had once appeared to Mr Musgrave, that he
should experience so little triumph in this victory. He had seen Peggy
smoke on two separate occasions, and, although the sight had pleased him
ill, he had reluctantly admitted that with some women the habit, if
deplorable, was not unbecoming. The reason Peggy allowed for making the
promise, rather than the promise itself, gave John Musgrave pleasure.
Peggy took an affectionate farewell of the wondering Diogenes, enjoining
on him the necessity for behaving with the utmost propriety; and then,
while Mr Musgrave held the door cautiously ajar, she slipped out after
him through the narrow opening and left Diogenes, indignantly
protesting, on the other side.
Peggy returned home with a heart so lightened that she found it
difficult to dissemble before the Chadwicks and wear a mien becoming to
the double tragedy that had robbed Mrs Chadwick of her pampered pet and
herself of her daily companion.
"I am awfully sorry, Peggy," her uncle said, putting an arm through hers
as they went in to lunch together, "about Diogenes. I know you will
miss him a lot. But your aunt was so upset there was nothing else for
it. He had to be got rid of."
"He had to be got rid of," echoed Peggy, and lifted a pair of
reproachful eyes to his face. "You might have thought of a kinder way
out," she said. "You could quite easily have found him a home, and have
got rid of him that way. Poor Diogenes!"
"I wish I had," he said. "But Ruby worried me. There wasn't time to
think... Well, his troubles are over now, poor brute!"
Whereat Peggy involuntarily smiled. Diogenes' troubles, like John
Musgrave's, were, she realised, only just beginning.