THE YELLOW SPOTTED DOG
“I wonder what Titus will say?” muttered the Judge to himself. “I wonder
what Titus will say? Perhaps I should have waited to ask him.”
“Titus,” he said, when his grandson returned home from school, “what do
you think of the English boy?”
Titus grinned, then he said, “How is he?”
“Did you think he was very ill?” inquired the Judge.
“You’re going to keep him,” said Titus, bluntly. “I knew you would. I
knew he would get round you.”
“Do you like him?” asked the Judge, anxiously.
“Not I,” said Titus, contemptuously. “I think he’s a great, big fraud.”
The Judge sighed. Titus’s manner was cool, but he must be greatly
stirred about the matter, for he was not stuttering at all, and at each
reply he made to his grandfather he stepped slightly forward.
Finding himself crowded against the parlor door, the Judge opened it and
went in.
“Grandson,” he said to Titus, who was still advancing, “I want you to do
more good in the world than I have done.”
“I’ll be satisfied to do half as much,” replied Titus, dryly.
“You liked the boy when he came,” said the Judge, uneasily.
“I’ve never liked him for one single minute,” said Titus, striking an
inlaid table with his fist. “I’ve pretended to like him.”
“So you pretend, too?” said the Judge.
“If I didn’t pretend a bit,” said Titus, energetically, “I’d be fighting
from morning till night, with no stops for meals. Suppose I told half
the fellows in school what I think of them?”
“Suppose I told half the men downtown what I think of them?” reflected
the Judge, with inward shrinking.
“But there’s different kinds of pretense,” said Titus, still with
animation and still pursuing his grandfather, who, occasionally looking
over his shoulder, was stepping cautiously round the room. “I saw the
fellow was going to stay here. I wasn’t going to block him. I can keep
out of his way.”
“Then you are not prepared to receive him as a brother?”
“Brother—nonsense,” said Titus, disrespectfully. “I tell you,
grandfather, it’s easier to father a boy than to brother him.”
“He is going to be honest now,” said the Judge.
“Moonshine!” exclaimed Titus, angrily stamping his foot. “He’s a born
actor, like his father.”
“Titus,” said the Judge, mildly, from a corner where he had taken
refuge, “I never saw you do that before. You have been a respectful—”
“Well, I don’t feel respectful now,” said the boy, furiously. “How can I
respect you when I see every Tom, Dick, and Harry pulling the wool over
your eyes?”
“Our interview is at an end,” said the Judge, “and if you will step back
a little I will move toward the door. I am sure that upon thinking this
matter over you will see an apology is due to me.”
Titus sulkily dragged himself from the room. With a sinking of the heart
the Judge noticed that his limp was more perceptible than usual.
“Grandson,” he called after him.
Titus turned round. His grandfather’s face was glowing.
“How can you ever think for an instant,” said the Judge, “that any boy
or any girl can take the place of my only dear child?”
Titus’s sullen face melted.
“I want to make a noble man of you, my boy,” continued the older man,
advancing with both hands outstretched. “I want you to have a great,
generous heart, to get out into the huge world and make thousands of
souls happy. You cannot expect all those souls to be responsive. You
have got to make them happy, in spite of themselves; and how can you
hope to influence thousands when you shrink from only one, and only a
slightly uncongenial soul, at your own fireside? O, my dear grandson,
love everybody, love everybody!”
It would have taken a sterner soul than Titus’s to resist such words,
such ambitious and loving affection.
“Grandfather,” he said, slowly, “I’m sorry.”
The Judge caught his outstretched hand. “My dear boy,” he said, “my dear
boy,” and he pressed the black head to his heart. “My _own_ dear boy.”
Titus uttered a grunt of delight, and ran away. That _own_ was for him.
Fifty thousand English boys could not come between him and his
grandfather.
“Hello, chickie,” he said, catching up Bethany and her big school bag as
they appeared in the doorway. “Hello, chickie,” and he carried her and
the bag up the first of the long staircases.
Laughing and catching her breath with delight, Bethany, after she was
set down on her feet, threw a kiss after Titus and then mounted the next
staircase to her room.
Titus, pursuing a joyous pilgrimage to the stable, encountered Higby,
and gave the old fellow a playful dig in the ribs, which sent him into
his pantry with a crease of delight forming itself about his lips. Mrs.
Blodgett, pursing her lips over a spoiled pudding, was restored to good
humor by a playful pinch and a teasing “Hello, Blodgieblossom!” She
forgot to scold further, and Martha the cook bent over the dish in
question with a relieved smile.
Dashing through the kitchen, Titus tossed Jennie’s apron under the
table, then scampered out to tease and comfort Roblee.
Bethany, as usual, hurried to put away her things, then, kneeling on a
chair before her big basin, she washed her little face and hands and
trotted downstairs to have her before-luncheon chat with the Judge and
the pigeon.
It was astonishing how little waiting on the child required. The Judge
had been ready and willing to engage a youthful maid to attend her, but
Mrs. Blodgett had begged him not to do so, saying that an extra servant
would only be in the way, and that Bethany really required such a small
amount of attention that any of the present maidservants felt it a
pleasure to give it to her. Therefore Bethany had a small room all to
herself between Mrs. Blodgett’s and Dallas’s.
Not finding the Judge in his study, Bethany devoted herself to the
princess.
“I have been learning a new song about you,” she said, prettily. “Now,
listen,” and taking her red dress in her hands she made a little curtsey
and began:
“This is the birdie I love the best,
This is the Sukey I love to caress.
This is the birdie I love the best,
This is my darling Sukey.”
In the midst of her bowing and singing the Judge came into the room.
Sukey was standing with one claw uplifted, a pair of attentive eyes
fixed on Bethany, and an expression that seemed to say, “Very pretty,
indeed; please sing some more.”
“Where did you learn that, little girl?” inquired the Judge.
“I just changed it, Daddy Grandpa,” said Bethany, wheeling round. “It is
really and truly a dolly song, but I put in ‘birdie.’”
The Judge was looking intently at her. Was she not going to inquire
about the English boy? She had known that he was ill when she went to
school.
“Don’t you want to know how Dallas is?” he said, suggestively.
“O, yes, poor Dallas. Is he a sick boy yet?”
“No, he is better. He is going to stay here, Bethany.”
She looked up quickly. “To be your other boy—the boy you were looking
for when you found me?”
“Yes—exactly so.”
She made no reply, but, sitting down in the little rocking-chair that
the Judge kept in his study for her, she thoughtfully took Sukey on her
lap and began to stroke her pretty hood.
“Are you glad?” inquired the Judge.
“I would rather have had Charlie Brown,” she said, frankly. “Couldn’t
the Browns take Dallas, and let us have Charlie?”
The Judge did not reply. What a mysterious thing was child nature.
Bethany was sweet and kind with Dallas, but she did not like him as she
did Titus and Charlie Brown.
What was it about the English boy that did not harmonize with the
natures of either Bethany or Titus? It could not be a racial difference,
for the boy was half American. Probably Bethany and Titus, being
essentially honest, felt that there was something about the stranger
that was hidden from them. They did not quite trust him. Now, if Dallas
were to turn over a new leaf and try to be strictly honorable, to try to
mean just what he said, their slight aversion might change to real
liking.
“Daddy Grandpa,” asked Bethany, suddenly, “must I call Dallas
‘Brother’?”
“Yes, you must,” said the Judge, firmly. He would do his best to
reconcile these strong young natures.
Bethany’s face became dreamy. Her fingers stopped stroking the pigeon;
she was wandering off into her spirit land as she often did when things
in her material world went contrary with her.
The Judge, who had been standing watching her, walked back and forth,
and finally extended his promenade to the hall.
When he approached the doorway or entered the study he could catch
sentences from Bethany.
“Yellow, spotted dog, you must not bite clothes. Be a good, gentle dog,
or boys will throw stones at you. Brick, will you let poor doggie sleep
in your hogshead to-night? He is lonely all by himself.”
“So the colored boy slept in a hogshead,” murmured the Judge.
“Hark,” said Bethany, suddenly, “I hear his bark, his sweet, sweet bark.
O, my dear Bylow, my lovely spotted dog, I could hug you.”
The Judge, happening to be near the hall window, and happening to hear a
dog bark, instinctively looked out.
To his amazement a colored boy with a dog was passing on the opposite
side of the street—and the dog was spotted.
“Bethany,” he said, suddenly, “is your colored boy very black?”
She threw up her little head, and, losing her thoughtful expression,
came back to earth. “No, sir; Brick is a kind of a red-brown boy—like
bricks. That is why the boys called him Brick.”
The Judge involuntarily stretched out a hand. He felt like hailing the
dirty-looking mulatto boy now getting out of sight.
“There goes Bylow again,” exclaimed Bethany, “hear his sweet little
voice, Sukey.”
The Judge started. The dog in the street had just uttered a succession
of barks as he turned the corner—most unmelodious and ugly barks, to
tell the truth, but then Bethany’s geese were all swans.
“Child,” he said, “I thought that dog was a ghost dog.”
“So he is a ghost dog,” she remonstrated, gently, “but don’t you know I
told you he was a real dog, too. He isn’t dead. He is only losted.”
“And when he barked just now was he barking as a ghost or a real dog?”
“He is a ghost,” she said, thoughtfully, “because I never see him in the
streets now, but I guess his bark must have been real—it sounded so
_naturelle_. Perhaps he is in the air,” and she looked up at the
ceiling.
The Judge laughed and resumed his walk, but the dog question interested
him considerably, especially later on when he took to meeting the same
colored boy about town with a spotted dog at his heels. The dog had
yellow eyes, and the Judge, knowing that if the boy remained in
Riverport it would only be a question of time as to his meeting with
Bethany, shuddered and shrank within himself, for he knew what the
little girl would do.