"I guess he wouldn"t be much of a watchdog."
"Watchdog! Say, that mutt watches all the time, day and night! You let a burglar come sneaking in, or a tramp or someone--wow! Grabs "em by the throat, that"s all!"
"Fifty cents!" cried the snared Cowan twin. Something told the owner this would be the last raise.
"Let"s see the money!"
He saw it, and the prodigy, Frank, sometimes called George by the owner"s little sister, had a new master. The Wilbur twin tingled through all his being when the end of the rope leash was placed in his hand.
A tradesman now descried them from the rear door of his shop. He saw smoke from the relighted pennygrabs and noted the mound of excelsior.
"Hi, there!" he called, harshly. "Beat it outa there! What you want to do--set the whole town afire?"
Of course nothing of this sort had occurred to them, but only Merle answered very politely, "No, sir!" The others merely moved off, holding the question silly. Wilbur Cowan stalked ahead with his purchase.
"I hate just terrible to part with him," said the dog"s late owner.
"Come on to Solly Gumble"s," said Wilbur, significantly. He must do something to heal this hurt.
The mob followed gleefully. The Wilbur twin was hoping they would meet no other dog. He didn"t want good old Frank to eat another dog right on the street.
Back in Solly Gumble"s he bought lavishly for his eight guests. The guests were ideal; none of them spoke of having to leave early, though the day was drawing in. And none of the guests noted that the almost continuous stream of small coin flowing to the Gumble till came now but from one pocket of the host. Yet hardly a guest but could eat from either hand as he chose. It was a scene of Babylonian profligacy--even the late owner of Frank joined in the revel full-spiritedly, and it endured to a certain moment of icy realization, suffered by the host. It came when Solly Gumble, in the midst of much serving, bethought him of the blue jay.
"I managed to save him for you," he told the Wilbur twin, and reached down the treasure. With a cloth he dusted the feathers and tenderly wiped the eyes. "A first-cla.s.s animal for fifty cents," he said--"and durable. He"ll last a lifetime if you be careful of him--keep him in the parlour just to be pretty."
The munching revellers gathered about with interest. There seemed no limit to the daring of this prodigal. Then there came upon the Wilbur twin a moment of sinister calculation. A hand sank swiftly into a pocket and brought up a scant few nickels and pennies. Amid a thickening silence he counted these remaining coins.
Then in deadly tones he declared to Solly Gumble, "I only got forty-eight cents left!"
"Oh, my! I must say! Spent all his money!" shrilled the Merle twin on a note of triumph that was yet bitter.
"Spent all his money!" echoed the shocked courtiers, and looked upon him coldly. Some of them withdrew across the store and in low tones pretended to discuss the merits of articles in another show case.
"I guess you couldn"t let me have him for forty-eight cents," said the Wilbur twin hopelessly.
Solly Gumble removed his skullcap, fluffed his scanty ring of curls, and drew on the cap again. His manner was judicial but not repellent.
"Mebbe I could--mebbe I couldn"t," he said. "You sure you ain"t got two cents more in that other pocket, hey?"
The Wilbur twin searched, but it was the most arid of formalities.
"No, sir; I spent it all."
"Spent all his money!" remarked the dog seller with a kind of pitying contempt, and drew off toward the door. Two more of the courtiers followed as unerringly as if trained in palaces. Solly Gumble bent above the counter.
"Well, now, you young man, you listen to me. You been a right good customer, treating all your little friends so grand, so I tell you straight--you take that fine bird for forty-eight cents. Not to many would I come down, but to you--yes."
Wilbur Cowan, overcome, mumbled his thanks. He was alone at the counter now, Merle having joined the withdrawn courtiers.
"I"m a fair trader," said Solly Gumble. "I can take--I give. Here now!"
And amazingly he extended to the penniless wreck a large and golden orange, perhaps one of the largest oranges ever grown.
The recipient was again overcome. He blushed as he thanked this open-handed tradesman. Then with his blue jay, his orange, his dog, he turned away. Now he first became aware of the changed att.i.tude of his late dependents. It did not distress him. It seemed wholly natural, this icy withdrawal of their fellowship. Why should they push about him any longer? He was, instead, rather concerned to defend his spendthrift courses.
"Spent all his money!" came a barbed jeer from the Merle twin.
The ruined one stalked by him with dignity, having remembered a fine speech he had once heard his father make.
"Oh, well," he said, lightly, "easy come, easy go!"
The Merle twin still bore the alb.u.m and the potent invigorator that was to make a new man of Judge Penniman. His impoverished brother carried the blue jay, looking alert and lifelike in the open, the mammoth orange, gift for Mrs. Penniman--he had nearly forgotten her--and tenderly he led the dog, Frank. Not to have all his money again would he have parted with his treasures and the memory of supreme delights.
Not for all his squandered fortune would he have bartered Frank, the dog. Frank capered at his side, ever and again looking up brightly at his new master. Never had so much attention been shown him. Never before had he been confined by a leash, as if he were a desirable dog.
Opposite the Mansion House, Newbern"s chief hotel, Frank gave signal proof of his intelligence. From across River Street he had been espied by Boodles, the Mansion House dog, a creature of dusty, pinkish white, of short neck and wide jaws, of a clouded but still definite bull ancestry. Boodles was a dog about town, wearing many scars of combat, a swashbuckler of a dog, rough-mannered, raffish; if not actually quarrelsome, at least highly sensitive where his honour was concerned.
He made it a point to know every dog in town, and as he rose from a sitting posture, where he had been taking the air before his inn, it could be observed that Frank was new to him--certainly new and perhaps objectionable. He stepped lightly halfway across the now empty street and stopped for a further look. He seemed to be saying, "Maybe it ain"t a dog, after all." But the closer look and a lifted nose wrinkling into the breeze set him right. He left for a still closer look at what was unquestionably a dog.
The Wilbur twin became concerned for Boodles. He regarded him highly.
But he knew that Boodles was a fighter, and Frank ate them up. He commanded Boodles to go back, but though he had slowed his pace and now halted a dozen feet from Frank, the cannibal, Boodles showed that he was not going back until he had some better reason. Violence of the cruellest sort seemed forward. But perhaps Frank might be won from his loathly practice.
"You, Frank, be quiet, sir!" ordered Wilbur, though Frank had not been unquiet. "Be still, sir!" he added, and threatened his pet with an open palm. But Frank had attention only for Boodles, who now approached, little recking his fate. The clash was at hand.
"Be still, sir!" again commanded Wilbur in anguished tones, whereupon the obedient Frank tumbled to lie upon his back, four limp legs in air, turning his head to simper up at Boodles, who stood inquiringly above him. Boodles then sniffed an amiable contempt and ran back to his hotel.
Frank strained at his leash to follow. His proud owner thought there could be few dogs in all the world so biddable as this.
The twins went on. Merle was watching his chance to recover that spiritual supremacy over the other that had been his until the accident of wealth had wrenched it from him.
"You"ll catch it for keeping us out so late," he warned--"and cursing and fighting and spending all your money!"
The other scarce heard him. He walked through shining clouds far above an earth where one catches it.
CHAPTER III
The Penniman house, white, with green blinds, is set back from the maple-and-elm-shaded street, guarded by a white picket fence. Between the house and gate a green lawn was crossed by a gravelled walk, with borders of phlox; beyond the borders, on either side, were flowering shrubs, and at equal distances from the walk, circular beds of scarlet tulips and yellow daffodils. Detached from the Penniman house, but still in the same yard, was a smaller, one-storied house, also white, with green blinds, tenanted by Dave Cowan and his twins, who--in Newbern vernacular--mealed with Mrs. Penniman. It had been the Cowan home when Dave married the Penniman cousin who had borne the twins. There was a path worn in the gra.s.s between the two houses.
On the Penniman front porch the judge was throned in a wicker chair. He was a n.o.bly fronted old gentleman, with imposing head, bald at the top but tastefully hung with pale, fluffy side curls. His face was wide and full, smoothly shaven, his cheeks pink, his eyes a pure, pale blue. He was clad in a rumpled linen suit the trousers of which were drawn well up his plump legs above white socks and low black shoes, broad and loose fitting. As the shadows had lengthened and the day cooled he abandoned a palm-leaf fan he had been languidly waving. His face at the moment glowed with animation, for he played over the deciding game in that day"s match at checkers by which, at the harness shop, he had vanquished an acclaimed rival from over Higgston way. The fellow had been skilled beyond the average, but supremacy was still with the Newbern champion.
So absorbed was he, achieving again that last bit of strategy by which he had gained the place to capture two men and reach the enemy"s king row, that his soft-stepping daughter, who had come from the house, had to address him twice.
"Have you had a good day, father?"
The judge was momentarily confused. He had to recall that his invalidism, not his checker prowess, was in question. He regained his presence of mind; he coughed feebly, reaching a hand tenderly back to a point between his shoulder blades.
"Not one of my real bad days, Winona. I can"t really say I"ve suffered.
Stuff that other cushion in back of me, will you? I got a new pain kind of in this left shoulder--neuralgia, mebbe. But my sciatica ain"t troubled me--not too much."