"Yes, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle, meekly.
She beamed.
"Well, dear, what kind of a dog shall we get?" she asked briskly. He felt that all was lost.
"There are dogs and dogs," he said moodily. "And I don"t know anything about any of them."
"I"ll read what it says here," she said. Mrs. Pottle was pursuing culture through the encyclopedia, and felt that she would overtake it on almost any page now.
"Dog," she read, "is the English generic term for the quadruped of the domesticated variety of _canis_."
"Well, I"ll be darned!" exclaimed her husband. "Is that a fact?"
"Be serious, Ambrose, please. The choice of a dog is no jesting matter,"
she rebuked him, and then read on, "In the Old and New Testaments the dog is spoken of almost with abhorrence; indeed, it ranks among the unclean beasts----"
"There, Blossom," cried Mr. Pottle, clutching at a straw, "what did I tell you? Would you fly in the face of the Good Book?"
She did not deign to reply verbally; she looked refrigerators at him.
"The Egyptians, on the other hand," she read, a note of triumph in her voice, "venerated the dog, and when a dog died they shaved their heads as a badge of mourning----"
"The Egyptians did, hey?" remarked Mr. Pottle, open disgust on his apple of face. "Shaved their own heads, did they? No wonder they all turned to mummies. You can"t tell me it"s safe for a man to shave his own head; there ought to be a law against it."
Mr. Pottle was in the barber business.
Unheedful of this digression, Mrs. Pottle read on.
"There are many sorts of dogs. I"ll read the list so we can pick out ours. You needn"t look cranky, Ambrose; we"re going to have one. Let me see. Ah, yes. "There are Great Danes, mastiffs, collies, dalmatians, chows, New Foundlands, poodles, setters, pointers, retrievers--Labrador and flat-coated--spaniels, beagles, dachshunds--I"ll admit they are rather nasty; they"re the only sort of dog I can"t bear--whippets, otterhounds, terriers, including Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Skye and fox, and St. Bernards." St. Bernards, it says, are the largest; "their ears are small and their foreheads white and dome-shaped, giving them the well known expression of benignity and intelligence." Oh, Ambrose"--her eyes were full of dreams--"Oh, Ambrose, wouldn"t it be just too wonderful for words to have a great, big, beautiful dog like that?"
"There isn"t any too much room in this bungalow as it is," demurred Mr.
Pottle. "Better get a chow."
"You don"t seem to realize, Ambrose Pottle," the lady replied with some severity, "that what I want a dog for is protection."
"Protection, my angel? Can"t I protect you?"
"Not when you"re away on the road selling your shaving cream. Then"s when I need some big, loyal creature to protect me."
"From what?"
"Well, burglars."
"Why should they come here?"
"How about all our wedding silver? And then kidnapers might come."
"Kidnapers? What could they kidnap?"
"Me," said Mrs. Pottle. "How would you like to come home from Zanesville or Bucyrus some day and find me gone, Ambrose?" Her lip quivered at the thought.
To Mr. Pottle, privately, this contingency seemed remote. His bride was not the sort of woman one might kidnap easily. She was a plentiful lady of a well developed maturity, whose clothes did not conceal her heroic mold, albeit they fitted her as tightly as if her modiste were a taxidermist. However, not for worlds would he have voiced this sacrilegious thought; he was in love; he preferred that she should think of herself as infinitely clinging and helpless; he fancied the role of st.u.r.dy oak.
"All right, Blossom," he gave in, patting her cheek. "If my angel wants a dog, she shall have one. That reminds me, Charley Meacham, the boss barber of the Ohio House, has a nice litter. He offered me one or two or three if I wanted them. The mother is as fine a looking spotted coach dog as ever you laid an eye on and the pups----"
"What was the father?" demanded Mrs. Pottle.
"How should I know? There"s a black pup, and a spotted pup, and a yellow pup, and a white pup and a----"
Mrs. Pottle sniffed.
"No mungles for me," she stated, flatly, "I hate mungles. I want a thoroughbred, or nothing. One with a pedigree, like that adorably handsome creature there."
She nodded toward the engraving of the giant St. Bernards.
"But, darling," objected Mr. Pottle, "pedigreed pups cost money. A dog can bark and bite whether he has a family tree or not, can"t he? We can"t afford one of these fancy, blue-blooded ones. I"ve got notes at the bank right now I don"t know how the dooce I"m going to pay. My shaving stick needs capital. I can"t be blowing in hard-earned dough on pups."
"Oh, Ambrose, I actually believe you--don"t--care--whether--I"m--kidnaped--or--not!" his wife began, a catch in her voice. A heart of wrought iron would have been melted by the pathos of her tone and face.
"There, there, honey," said Mr. Pottle, hastily, with an appropriate amatory gesture, "you shall have your pup. But remember this, Blossom Pottle. He"s yours. You are to have all the responsibility and care of him."
"Oh, Ambrose, you"re so good to me," she breathed.
The next evening when Mr. Pottle came home he observed something brown and fuzzy nestling in his Sunday velour hat. With a smothered exclamation of the kind that has no place in a romance, he dumped the thing out and saw it waddle away on unsteady legs, leaving him sadly contemplating the strawberry silk lining of his best hat.
"Isn"t he a love? Isn"t he just too sweet," cried Mrs. Pottle, emerging from the living room and catching the object up in her arms. "Come to mama, sweetie-pie. Did the na.s.sy man frighten my precious Pershing?"
"Your precious what?"
"Pershing. I named him for a brave man and a fighter. I just know he"ll be worthy of it, when he grows up, and starts to protect me."
"In how many years?" inquired Mr. Pottle, cynically.
"The man said he"d be big enough to be a watch dog in a very few months; they grow so fast."
"What man said this?"
"The kennel man. I bought Pershing at the Laddiebrook-Sunshine Kennels to-day." She paused to kiss the pink muzzle of the little animal; Mr.
Pottle winced at this but she noted it not, and rushed on.
"Such an interesting place, Ambrose. Nothing but dogs and dogs and dogs.
All kinds, too. They even had one mean, sneaky-looking dachshund there; I just couldn"t trust a dog like that. Ugh! Well, I looked at all the dogs. The minute I saw Pershing I knew he was my dog. His little eyes looked up at me as much as to say, "I"ll be yours, mistress, faithful to the death," and he put out the dearest little pink tongue and licked my hand. The kennel man said, "Now ain"t that wonderful, lady, the way he"s taken to you? Usually he growls at strangers. He"s a one man dog, all right, all right"."
"A one man dog?" said Mr. Pottle, blankly.
"Yes. One that loves his owner, and n.o.body else. That"s just the kind I want."
"Where do I come in?" inquired Mr. Pottle.