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Title: The key to Betsy's heart
Author: Sarah Noble Ives
Release date: May 24, 2024 [eBook #73681]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916
Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KEY TO BETSY'S HEART ***
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE KEY TO BETSY’S HEART
[Illustration: A FROLIC WOULD FOLLOW
_Frontispiece_]
THE KEY TO
BETSY’S HEART
BY
SARAH NOBLE IVES
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE COMING OF BETSY 1
II. THE NEW SURROUNDINGS 10
III. THE COMING OF THE PRINCE 22
IV. BETSY MEETS VAN 36
V. VAN’S FIRST LESSONS 47
VI. BETSY’S FIRST LESSONS 62
VII. VAN GOES TO CHURCH 74
VIII. THE GREAT STORM 87
IX. MORE LESSONS 100
X. VAN’S WILD OATS 113
XI. VAN BECOMES A HERO 128
XII. THE GREAT PARADE 143
XIII. VAN IN DISGRACE 156
XIV. VAN’S BANISHMENT 171
XV. VAN’S HARD LESSONS 183
XVI. THE JOURNEY HOME 193
XVII. VAN THE RESCUER 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A frolic would follow _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
Most unpromising she was, at the first glance 6
She fled with him down the aisle 84
Van caught up with Piggy at the far end of the lawn 152
THE KEY TO BETSY’S HEART
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF BETSY
[Illustration: “She needed all the heartening she could get.”]
Betsy sat staring through the window of the first hack she had ever
been in,--also it was the first she had ever seen. She was wondering,
wondering, as she rolled along up two-mile drive that lay between the
station and the Hill-Top, what would happen next. Things had moved
pretty swiftly in the past few weeks, and Betsy had been simply a
bewildered leaf floating on the whirling tide of destiny.
To begin with, her father had disappeared;--run away from the little
farm on the New Hampshire hillside. Tired of the stones and the
drudgery--tired, too, of the wife, who, through neglect, hard work
and lack of good food, had grown to be a fretful invalid--he had
disappeared like a coward, in the night, no one knew where.
There were days after that when Betsy had gone hungry, for there was
no money in the house, and but little food, and at last had come a
day when the mother had fallen weakly on the floor. Betsy had run,
frightened, down to old Mrs. Webb’s house for help, and Mrs. Webb
had told the neighbors, and they had all come from every direction,
surprised by the alarming news. It was planting season, and for some
time no one had happened to call at the little red house over in
Wixon’s Hollow, off the main road.
Then there had been a great bustling about. Betsy’s mother was put to
bed, a doctor had come, there was food in the house once more, and a
kindly neighbor took charge of affairs. But it was too late. In a few
days all was over.
But soon another leaf had been turned in Betsy’s book of life by a
letter from a distant relative, known vaguely to Betsy as “Aunt Kate
Johns.” Betsy was invited to come and stay a year with her.
Betsy had cried a little in secret over this, because it was something
unknown and consequently something fearful. But one must take what
comes,--so the poor little belongings were packed in a “carpet-bag,”
and Betsy took her first railway journey all alone. It would have been
a marvelous undertaking, but Betsy’s eyes were still blinded with the
tears of her loss.
And now here she was, and what would come next?
She had never seen “Uncle Ben,” and Aunt Kate had been simply a vision
of lovely color and soft silken draperies. Once or twice she had
whirled into the little red house, and away again. Well, after all, it
would be something new. Betsy plucked up her courage and dried her last
tear as the hack turned in at a gate.
Up a wide avenue went the hack, under stately trees and between
wonderful flower-beds and sunny reaches of grass and dandelions. The
dandelions looked homely and dear, but the prim magnificence of the
great, park-like place awed Betsy too much for other emotions. Uncle
Ben and Aunt Kate would probably be as stiff and unlovable as that
trimmed hedge over there. She braced herself for the worst.
Now they drove past a great stone building, full of winking eyes,
which were really windows peering into the sunset through a riot of
vines. That was the “Hospital,” no doubt, of which Uncle Ben was
superintendent. It looked huge and mysterious, and out of the unknown
future Betsy felt a chill of loneliness creep over her. The driver
stopped at last before a pretty brick house standing by itself in
the park. It was all nooks and gables, and around two sides of it
ran a porch delightfully shaded by honeysuckle. Betsy did not know
honeysuckle, but its sweet smell hung heavy over her, and somehow it
heartened her as she mounted the steps.
She needed all the heartening she could get, for Betsy had never before
been beyond her own New Hampshire valley. She wavered a little, and
there was a queer, wooden-y feeling in her legs as she lifted her
hand and rapped on the dark expanse of the door--she knew nothing of
doorbells or knockers, and did not even look for them.
Almost immediately the door swung open, and a trim maid said:
“Is this Miss Betsy? Come right in. Mrs. Johns is sick with a headache,
but she heard the carriage, and sent me to bring you up to her. Give me
your bag, Miss.”
Betsy gave up the carpet-bag doubtfully.
“You mustn’t bang it. I’ve got two fresh eggs in it for Aunt Kate.”
Up a broad winding stair Betsy followed the maid, and into a room all
delicate green and gold, with painted iris growing on the walls, up
from a thick carpet that was almost like the grassy lawn. From a low
couch came a soft voice.
“Come here, Betsy.”
The little figure stood stiffly before the couch,--a thin, small wisp
of a maid, with brown hair of the silky kind that never stays “put”;
the natural sallowness of her complexion was deepened by the tan of
out-of-door life; the little hands were reddened and roughened with
dishwashing and scrubbing,--for Betsy had mothered her mother ever
since she was big enough to bring in kindlings from the wood-pile.
A faded black frock, fashioned hurriedly from an old skirt of her
mother’s, made a pitiful attempt at mourning.
Most unpromising she was, at the first glance, and Aunt Kate’s heart
sank, until her eyes met the two brown ones,--so deep and soft that she
gave a start. Pools of liquid darkness they were, and out of them shone
a soul to be trusted. Aunt Kate held out two arms, lace-covered and
delicate, to enfold the small waif.
But Betsy did not accept the invitation. She stood there, crossing her
ankles, and not knowing what to do with her hands. Caresses she had
never known. In a voice shrill with the excitement of the interview,
she said:
“I’ve brought you two eggs,--they’re fresh. Speckly and Banty done ’em
for you.”
Out of her poverty the child had come with gifts! Aunt Kate’s eyes
dimmed a little, and her hand closed gently over the little red one
that hung limply at Betsy’s side.
“Did you bring them to me? I am so glad. I love fresh eggs.”
[Illustration: MOST UNPROMISING SHE WAS, AT THE FIRST GLANCE]
Betsy pointed to the maid. “She’s got my carpet-bag. Where’d you put
it?”
“In your room, Miss Betsy.”
“_My_ room? Have I got a room?”
“Show her, Treesa.”
Treesa led the way, and Betsy was soon back with an egg in each hand.
“They’re all right. I didn’t let no man nor nothin’ touch that bag
coming down. Here they are. They aren’t real cold yet, hardly. I shooed
Speckly off the nest to get this biggest one just before the stage came
for me.”
“Thank you, dear. They’re fine. This weeny one is just like a big
pearl. I hope you are going to be happy here with us.”
“I dunno. I never had much time for it.”
The sharp little nine-year-old voice had the edge of forty-five on it;
it was the echo of her mother’s fretful plaint which the child had
unconsciously picked up.
“Well, we’ll see. Run, now, and wash your hands and face, and Treesa
will give you some supper in your room.” Somehow Aunt Kate shrank from
leaving her alone with Uncle Ben this first night.
Betsy hesitated. “This room is handsomer than our parlor,--but it’s
kinder big and lonesome here.”
“It won’t seem so when you get used to it. We’re going to love you and
then you will love us and we’ll all be happy as larks. Now good-night,
little girl. You had better go right to bed after your tea. Treesa will
show you where to put your things, and to-morrow will be a new day,
Betsy dear, and then we’ll have time to get acquainted.”
Betsy walked to the door as if the interview was closed.
“Won’t you come and kiss me good-night?”
The child came slowly, as if unaccustomed to the rite, shrank a little
from the arm that stole about her, pecked the lips coldly; then, at the
soft caress of the white hand, she dropped a tiny corner of her reserve.
“Ma kissed me just afore she died.”
Then Betsy froze again, and walked out of the room.
Things passed in a whirl that evening. Whatever Betsy thought of the
dainty room, all in white, old rose and soft, warm gray, she did not
disclose to Treesa. She ate her meal from delicate china, with real
silver, and at last climbed into bed between the snowy sheets, and
straightened out the folds of her coarse, drilling nightgown for sleep.
“It’s awful grand and beautiful here,” she whispered to herself; “but
I’ll be lonesome. I wisht Ma was here, an’ I--I wisht I was back in the
Holler!”
She hid her face in the pillow when Treesa came in, that her tears
might not be seen.
“Good-night, Miss Betsy. Do you want a light left in your room?”
“No’m. I allers go to sleep in the dark,” said Betsy, bravely. She
watched between her fingers as Treesa pulled a little chain, and snap!
out went the light. At home they blew it out, and there was a smell of
kerosene or tallow afterwards. This interested Betsy so much, wondering
how it was done, that she forgot to stay awake and grieve through the
dark hours, and before she could have counted a hundred, the wings of
childish sleep were around her.
[Illustration: “She sat up and looked out of the window.”]
CHAPTER II
THE NEW SURROUNDINGS
Betsy awoke with a strange feeling of being still in a dream. Instead
of opening her eyes on the little attic room of the red house in the
Hollow, she was greeted by what seemed to her a palace in a fairy tale.
She rubbed her eyes, sat up, and looked out of the window.
Yes, it was true; instead of being in a hollow she was on a hilltop.
Stretched out below her lay a green valley, and through the trees
peeped many, many houses, more than Betsy had ever dreamed of in all
her life. It must be a city, she thought, but the pictures in her
geography had not prepared her for anything like this. The city seemed
to be sitting on a hillside, with its feet dipping in the waters of a
broad blue river. She was quite awake now, and beginning to realize
what had happened.
Bang, bang, bang! There came a terrifying sound. It might have been a
church bell, but it was too near; it might have been somebody pounding
on the brass soap-kettle at home, but it was too musical. Betsy was out
of bed like a shot, just as Aunt Kate showed her smiling face through a
crack in the door.
“My goodness! What was that noise?” cried Betsy.
“Just the rising gong, dear. I intended to have wakened you before it
sounded. You’ll have just time to dress before breakfast. What are you
going to put on?”
“I got this dress I wore here, for best, and I got a black and white
check gingham for every day. I had two blue calicoes and a red merino,
but Mrs. Webb said I wasn’t to bring ’em, ’cause they was colored, and
I’m wearin’ black things.” Betsy told off the items of her wardrobe in
one breath.
“Put on your gingham. It will do for now. Have you some light shoes?”
“Only just these copper-toes. I stub ’em out awful, and Pa didn’t
b’lieve in no foolishness, he said. Summertimes I go barefoot, anyway.”
“Dear me! Well, these will do until after breakfast.”
Betsy dressed hurriedly, after having first been introduced to a big
porcelain bathtub, where she was told to hop in this morning and every
morning thereafter, for a splash.
“Oh my! Can I learn to swim in it?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t wide enough for you.”
“It’s bigger’n where I tried to learn in the brook. There wasn’t room
in that pool for the whole of me. I just kicked my legs and held on to
the bank, and then I kicked my arms, with my legs on the bank. But I
dunno if I really learned.”
Aunt Kate laughed a merry laugh, and left her. Betsy finished off
her toilette by tying a rusty black ribbon on the end of her tight
pigtail, and was ready for breakfast.
At the table there was Uncle Ben to meet. He was a tall, grave man,
with a gray moustache,--much older-looking than Aunt Kate; but there
was a twinkle in his eye as he shook Betsy’s hand.
“Good morning. I suppose this is Miss Betsy Wixon?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and slipped into the chair that Treesa pointed
out to her. She contributed nothing more to the conversation for the
present, but began to eat with the healthy appetite of a child. Aunt
Kate sighed as she saw her bite off the biggest piece possible from her
slice of toast, stuff nearly half an egg into her mouth at once, and
drink her coffee noisily. If the service impressed Betsy, she gave no
sign; only after Treesa had quietly finished her duties and retired to
the kitchen, did she offer a remark.
“Aunt Kate,--don’t your hired girl eat to the table with you?”
She received her information on the subject without comment, wiped her
mouth on her sleeve, paying no attention to the napkin that Treesa had
placed in her lap, pushed back her chair, slipped down, and, without
waiting to be excused, walked out upon the porch.
Uncle Ben’s eyes followed the queer little figure.
“Your time won’t hang idle on your hands, Kate, even if she’s good.
Do teach her some table manners, and get that black and white Mother
Hubbard thing into the waste basket.”
“Just wait, Ben, until to-night. There will be a transformation on
the surface, even so soon as that. I’ve a scheme all worked out,--on
a theory that did not entirely originate with me. In fact, I have
already begun to work on it. I spent all yesterday morning in the heat,
shopping,--that’s where I got my headache. When she begins to connect
the idea of self-respect with her appearance, she’ll begin to try to
live up to her looks. There is splendid material there, and I’m going
to do the utmost with it. I need the child as much as she needs me. I
love her already, and this big house will not be empty any more. She’ll
respond,--you’ll see.”
“I’ll trust you, Kate, to succeed in whatever you start out to do. Just
at present I will say that I’d rather have her around than forty just
like her.”
“You encourage me, Ben. By and by you will applaud me. Watch!”
Later, when Dr. Johns had gone to his office at the Main Building, Aunt
Kate called Betsy in, and together they mounted to the third floor,
where was a cosy sewing-room, with a high north light. On a couch lay a
number of pieces of cloth.
“My, aren’t they pretty!” said Betsy.
“We are going to make some simple frocks for you. Mrs. Allston is
coming to-day to help.”
“For me? Why, I’m in mournin’ for Ma.”
“People--little girls--wear white, even when they are in mourning, and
we can save the colored ones till a little later, if you prefer.”
“The pink’s the prettiest. It looks like the wild roses in our back
lot. But I shall have to wait. Oh, well, I ain’t never had even a white
dress before. I can help you sew. I know how.”
“Do you? Why, that’s fine! Now here are some underclothes for you to
put on. I want you to be all ready when Mrs. Allston comes to help us
sew.”
“These things? They got lace on.”
“Yes.”
“Why, I’d tear ’em to bits, climbin’ trees.”
“If you can sew you’ll know how to mend them, and you will learn to be
careful. Now try on these shoes.”
A pair of dainty strap-slippers were chosen, with stockings to match,
and soon Betsy was surveying herself in the mirror.
“Have I got to wear ’em always?”
“Most people do, here.”
“Hm! They’ll feel funny. But I’ll get used to ’em. Folks said you would
likely ‘doll me up’ some. But I didn’t think there was such pretty
things in all the world. I’m afraid--I’m afraid, Aunt Kate, that I
won’t mourn so hard as I ought to, with this lace on my petticoat.”
“You must think of how your mother would have liked to see you in these
pretty things. She used to wear dainty, lace-trimmed clothes herself,
when she was little. And, dearie, she would not want you to mourn.
She’s so much happier now. Just enjoy the things, and learn to make
your soul and body pretty, like the clothes.”
“Mrs. Webb said I’d prob’ly get vain when you took me in hand,--but
I guess I can resk one small ‘vain.’ I can wear my black hair-ribbin,
so my head’ll mourn, anyway, and my feet’ll mourn, too, in these black
slippers.”
With this compromise they sat down, as soon as Mrs. Allston had
arrived, and Betsy’s nimble little fingers ran with the best. Basting,
back-stitching and “over-and-overing” she could do, and she soon
learned the mysteries of hemming and felling. So eager was she that her
fingers almost learned of themselves.
In the afternoon a tired but excited Betsy beheld her first white
frock, ready to wear.
“That will do for a start,” said Aunt Kate. “Now, before you put it on,
let us make sure that everything else is all right. Will you let me do
your hair for you?”
Betsy submitted, and in a twinkling the tight pigtail was unbraided.
“First we must get rid of the dust of the train. Did you ever have a
real shampoo?”
“No’m, I guess not. I never saw one.--Is it side-combs?”
Aunt Kate laughed merrily.
“I’ll show you.”
To Betsy’s surprise she was taken to the bathroom, and introduced to
the wonders of a beaten egg, warm water, a delightful, soapy lather,
more warm water, then cold, and last, a brisk towel-rubbing and fanning.
Out of it all the brown hair emerged, soft and fluffy, with almost a
desire to kink at the ends, and a fresh black ribbon was tied jauntily
into the flowing meshes.
Betsy looked at herself critically.
“It seems like I was in a picter. But it’ll snarl like sixty.”
“I’ll show you how to braid it nicely when you are playing, but
this is for Uncle Ben to see. Now, just let me get the whole
effect:--underwear, stockings, slippers, hair,--all right, and now
the frock can go on.... Stop a minute, though; let me look at your
finger-nails.--My little Betsy, we’ve some work ahead of us here!”
“What’s the matter with ’em? I washed ’em.”
“Yes, I see, dear. But did no one ever tell you not to bite your nails?”
“No’m. Why, they’d get awful long if I didn’t, and then I’d break ’em,
washin’ dishes.”
“Well, I’ll make them look as nice as I can, and you must promise me
not to bite them any more.”
Betsy hesitated.--“I’ll try,” she said at last, “but I can’t
promise,--not right off,--’cause I bite ’em when I’m thinkin’ things. I
couldn’t promise nothin’ ’at I might forget.”
“That’s right, too. But you must do your best to remember. Little girls
must be nice in every way.”
That evening, when Uncle Ben came to dinner, he was greeted by an
apparition all in white. Betsy stood by her chair with a shy look at
him, to observe the effect of her transformation.
“As I live,--a fairy,--out of a story-book! Or was there a fairy
godmother somewhere, and is this Cinderella? Where is the Prince?”
Betsy laughed and seated herself, and Aunt Kate noticed that at the end
of the meal she reached down shyly, and wiped her mouth on the corner
of her napkin.
A week passed, and Betsy was clothed and almost in her right mind once
more, when Aunt Kate came in one morning, with a pretty notebook in her
hand.
“Now, Betsy dear, this is to be your book, and I have put the word
‘Manners’ and a motto,--‘Manner maketh the Man’, at the top. One of the
most important things is the way we eat our meals, and I think it will
be easier for you if I do not speak to you at the table. But afterwards
we will come up to your room for a minute, all by ourselves, and I will
tell you what you have done that is not just right, and you can write
it down in this book. Then we will practice with knives and forks and
spoons, and make believe eat. At the table I’ll watch you, and you may
watch me, and if you see anything that seems queer to you, please ask
me about it.”
“Don’t I eat all right?”
“Well,--you have some things to learn.”
“Ma never had time to learn me much. We just _et_, and that was all
they was to it.”
“Have you noticed anything that we do differently here from what you
have seen at home?”
“One or two, yes’m. That about the napkin, and, now, Uncle Ben, he
don’t never eat his meat with his knife,--he just cuts it and takes it
on his fork; and you don’t never turn your coffee in your saucer.”
“Good, Betsy! Why, you’ll learn so fast that it will be simply play.”
As Aunt Kate rose to leave the room her hand rested for a moment on the
soft brown hair. At the new touch of tenderness the child looked up and
met a glow in Aunt Kate’s eyes--a look of mother-yearning. Something
stirred in Betsy’s heart,--an impulse to seize and hold that gentle
hand in both her own. But she did not quite dare--yet. Down where Aunt
Kate could not see she caught a fold of the muslin gown that brushed
past her, and crushed it with timid fingers.
So the lessons in manners began. Grammar could wait a bit. Aunt Kate
did not intend to cram Betsy, for a little at a time is easier to
digest.
And in the meantime, down in New York City, something was happening
that was to color all Betsy’s new life on the Hill-Top.
[Illustration: “Barked fiercely at his small sister.”]
CHAPTER III
THE COMING OF THE PRINCE
Vanart VI. sat on the edge of his dish, with all of his four paws in
the milk, and barked fiercely at his small sister, who hovered, shy and
meek, on the farther edge of Elysium. He knew what all dogs (and some
men) know, that Might is Right; and he reasoned, not uncleverly, that
if his four-weeks-old voice could intimidate Sister Belle, he could
certainly keep her off until he had feasted and made sure of his own
share.
A ray of afternoon sunlight crept in through the skylight of the big
New York studio, and lighted up this scene, just as Bob Grant opened
the door, looked for the cause of the commotion, dropped his parcel of
sketches on the floor, and laughed.
“You greedy little sinner! Is that the kind of a dog you are going to
be? You’ll be needing some discipline, I’m thinking. Come here to me,
you young nipper.”
The wee morsel looked up for an instant, beheld Bob Grant, and
continued barking--at _him_. He held his head royally, too, as if he
knew that he was the King of Hearts, bearing a noble name, and with a
long pedigree behind him.
“Why, you’re a raving beauty, even now. And, if I am not mistaken,
you’re mine. Who your young companion is I don’t know. I hope to Goshen
Billy didn’t send me the two of you!”
No thought of a master entered Van’s mind at that time. His attention
was on the milk, and so intent was he on asserting his rights, that he
quite forgot to drink. The Dog in the Milk was evidently first cousin
to the “Dog in the Manger.”
Bob opened the letter that was tied to the basket in which the puppies
had arrived. Uppermost lay the register of birth and ancestry. It read
like this:
“Vanart VI.:--born March 26th, 1902. Smooth fox-terrier. Color--white,
with chestnut-brown head and saddle and spot at base of tail.”
Then followed his father’s name, Vanart I.; his mother’s, Queen Mab,
and a long list of forefathers and foremothers. Bob Grant read, and
learned that Vanart I. was born in the Royal Victoria Kennels at
Montreal; that _his_ father was the famous Rex, which means king;--all
down the line appeared royal names.
So it was apparent that our hero was very well born indeed,--a prince
of the blood, and heir by grace of his own personal beauty and
attractions to his great father’s title. The latter fact was explained
in the letter that lay underneath the register:
“Dear old Bob:--So sorry not to find you in, and I wish I might stay
to know what you think of the puppy. The janitress let me in, and
I’ve fixed things up as well as I could. I don’t believe they will do
much damage before you return. You know I promised you one sometime,
and here he is.
“His mother is Queen Mab, of the Newark Kennels, and as this is the
fifth year of my Van’s fatherhood, your treasure’s full name is
Vanart VI.... He wins the title, as he is the pride and beauty of the
family.
“I think you will like him because he is marked something like his
father. Please pardon me for bringing his sister Belle with him; the
mother could not take care of so many.
“I will come after Belle in a day or two. I hope you’ll like your
gift. Good luck to you,--Billy.”
Bob laid aside the letter and turned his attention once more to the
problem at his feet. No doubt at all as to which was his own puppy. Bob
picked Van out of the dish, wiped the milk off his feet, and introduced
himself.
Van did not cringe, or try to get away, but looked up from the big
hand that held him, into the face of the young man, with a fearless
confidence, and fell to chewing Bob’s finger, as if it were the whole
business of life.
“Well, Vanart VI., you are here, and I hope a kind Providence will tell
me what to do with you. For the present I’ve got to put up with you
somehow. Two of them,--Oh, Christmas!”
“Woof!” said Van, affably, and he bit Bob’s thumb a little harder, just
to show him that the chosen son of Vanart I. and Queen Mab was not to
be trifled with, and that, in reality, he owned Bob. But the merry
little eyes twinkled gayly, as if, after all, this being the Lord of
Creation was a good joke.
For two weeks--while he was getting his breath, you might say--Van
lived in the big New York studio with Bob Grant. Every day he grew
in grace, and became, more and more, a shapely, active little dog.
Beautiful indeed he was. Even in his young puppyhood he was lithe
and agile as a kitten. His feet were small, as became his birth and
breeding; he carried his brown head proudly on his delicate neck, that
arched as none but a thoroughbred’s might. His soft, pointed ears
were alert to all the new noises of a strange and interesting world,
and he wagged, or was wagged, by a funny bud of a tail, which every
well-brought-up fox-terrier knows is the style in good society. His
chest was broader than that of the ordinary breed, and his eyes were
dark and tender; and one who knew dogs understood at a glance that a
strain from some far-away bull-dog ancestor had added kindliness and
affection to the sometimes ill-tempered disposition of a full-blooded
fox terrier.
In those two weeks Van learned many things. One was that pins are not
good things to play with. Bob came in one day and found him on his
back, making queer little sounds through a rigidly open mouth, at which
he was pawing frantically to rid himself of something. Lodged between
his upper and lower molars was a pin which he had tried to swallow. Bob
removed it, and then Van barked and capered as if he had done a clever
thing. But he knew also that it was a thing not to be repeated.
The next thing he learned was that sisters do not stay with one always.
One day little Belle disappeared,--going out of the big New York
studio on the arm of Billy, never to return. Van did not mind that so
much. His short life had been all surprises so far, and he liked being
cock-o’-the-walk far better than sharing the glory.
So Belle faded from his little brain, like the other visions of his
border-land, and he quite forgot her in the excitement of the new and
wonderful things that he was learning. Until now the world had been a
constant series of changes, and more were to come; for so far he knew
nothing of the big out-of-doors.
Billy came in one evening, and stood looking down at the bonny bit as
he lay in his basket.
“Have you taken him out in Madison Square, yet, Bob?”
“Not yet. I’ve been too busy.”
“Get on your hat and we’ll show him the town. I’d like to see how he
will behave.”
He was wakened, yawning and blinking, crumpled gently under his
master’s arm, and they all went out into the soft May night.
First there was a long, bewildering street, full of noises and lights
that stunned and blinded the little Prince. For a moment he hid his
head in the folds of Bob’s jacket, and felt like whimpering at the
bigness of things. He himself was so small and new, and all this must
have been there before he came. He would certainly have to run to
catch up. Well, running was fun. He straightened up, settled himself
comfortably, and prepared to enjoy real living, no matter what happened.
People who passed looked admiringly at the uplifted, bobbing brown
head, and the wide-open, beautiful eyes that were awake to everything.
Some even stopped and patted him. He barked joyously in response, and
turned to fresh adventures.
And they came. Out of the street they turned into a bigger and wider
one. Then there opened out in front of them a great square place,--a
place with houses all around, and a roof very different from that in
the studio. It was soft and dark and green, and it waved and rustled
in the night breeze. There were many twinkling lights, and many, many
people. Some were moving swiftly, some slowly. Others were gossiping or
nodding on benches. It was all very wonderful.
Then, most astonishing of all, Van’s four little paws were set down on
a fuzzy, wet, cold carpet; and he stood alone in the very middle of
the whole wide world. Bob and Billy were simply bystanders; no hand was
upon him to restrain him; all this was his,--the trees, the lights, and
the starry dome above. Life began to unfold.
Afraid? Not he! He started at once on a voyage of discovery. There were
children there--the first he had ever seen. They beckoned and called
to him, and he trotted to them. They chased him and he scampered after
them, barking at their heels. He explored the grass-plots and a pansy
bed; he looked wonderingly at the fountain that rose and fell with a
throb of hidden power,--always falling and yet always there; at the
round basin of water that was like nothing so much as a giant milk dish.
Then he started for the people who were sitting in amused groups on
the benches, even the sleepy ones waking up to watch the dainty little
sprite.
“I’ll bet it’s his first night out,” said one fat old man who had been
reading a newspaper under an electric light, “but he’s game to his
ear-tips.”
“He’s a sport, all right,” said another. “See him go for that cross old
woman over the walk!”
The cross old woman looked down to see a small brown and white puppy
sitting confidingly on the edge of her faded skirt. She made a movement
as if to jerk it away, looked again, then stooped and patted the
winsome little head. Van seemed friendly. She stooped and picked him
up, and for a moment held him to her bosom, where nothing had lain
since the days when her hair was brown and her cheek smooth and rosy.
He looked into her eyes with his soft young brown ones, and all the
bitter hardness faded out of her face, as his delicate tongue flashed
across the tip of her nose. Then he gently nipped her hand, and
struggled to be off on fresh voyages of discovery.
Bob called to him, but he glanced at him defiantly, and ran in the
other direction. The fat man moved off down the walk, saying to others
as he went:
“Have you seen that pup over yonder? He’s sure some pup! Ha, ha! He’s
the whole show. Better have a look.”
A crowd collected to watch the tiny joyous thing: the old-timers who
studied the want and employment “ads”; the other shabby ones who were
busy swapping politics; the still shabbier ones who slept there with
their arms folded, their stubbly chins on their soiled shirt-fronts;
the casual passer-by,--even the policemen strolled up,--with an eye to
preserving peace and order, but remained to enjoy the fairy-like antics
of this new dweller in the world. Everybody forgot for a little while
that there were such words as “Keep off the grass.”
Van leaped for a June beetle,--missed it; a night moth winged by
him,--he chased it on flying feet, although his legs were still so
young and uncertain that he tumbled over every hummock in his path. A
child rolled a rubber ball toward him; he seized it and bore it to the
feet of his master, and lay down to demolish it. Bob rescued it, and
Van attacked a stick that a bent old man poked at him.
“You’re a bit of all right, and no mistake!” said the old man. “I bet
you can read the papers. Want to try?” He pulled the evening sheet out
of his pocket, and presented it to his young acquaintance.
Van closed his teeth on it, dragged it after him across the walk, and
sent the fragments flying far and wide.
Through the thickest of the crowd a seedy young man with a furtive eye
sidled to the inner edge of the onlookers. His hand flashed out as Van
gamboled near, and then--there was no Van on the dewy grass.
For a moment no one understood. It was all so sudden that no one
could tell who did it.--Yes, there was one who did,--a policeman who
was there to watch for just that very thing. The seedy young man had
reached the outer edge of the group and in an instant more would be
speeding down Twenty-fourth Street.
A big hand landed firmly on his coat-collar, another went into his
pocket, and out came Van,--dazed, but thinking it all part of the great
game the world was playing for his benefit. It was so quickly done that
the crowd hardly knew anything had happened, until those nearest saw
the thief wrench himself from the detaining hand and disappear in the
darkness. The policeman, glad of the chance to be so near the small
performer, held Van in the flat of one palm, and stroked him with the
other, as he passed him over to Bob.
“Here’s yer white elephant, young feller, and a foine wan he is. Ye’re
lucky to git him back. Them dog-pinchers is mighty handy with their
hooks.”
“You’re right,” said Bob. “They know a good thing when they see it. A
little more, and he would have been lost.”
“A little more, and yer dog ’ud be performin’ in a circus a year from
now. There’s manny a wan av us ’ud be likin’ to keep him.”
Bob and Billy walked back to the studio, and Bob said soberly:
“I like the little sinner, and it’s mighty good of you to give him
to me, but I can’t keep him here. City’s no place for a dog, and an
untrained pup at that.”
“Why don’t you send him up country?”
Bob thought a moment.
“Good idea! The very thing! Sister Kate’s just acquired a kid,--adopted
it, or something--up at the Hospital, you know. The kid’ll be lonesome
on the Hill-Top, with no companions. Off you go, Van,--I’ll take you up
there to-morrow. Kate’ll be surprised all right. They have never had a
dog or a chick or a child before, in the house, and it’ll do ’em good.
Ha, ha! I can see Dr. Johns’ eyes open; but he won’t turn him out, for
what Kate does ‘goes’ with the doctor, and what Bob does ‘goes’ with
Kate. Your destiny is fixed, young fellow. Missionary work for yours.”
[Illustration: “Sitting comfortably in the middle of Bob’s best silk
negligée shirt.”]
CHAPTER IV
BETSY MEETS VAN
Life moved on the wings of youth for Van, and changes were many. The
very morning after the trip to Madison Square, Bob Grant packed some
things into a suit-case. It lay on the floor, and Van could see into it
by putting his forepaws on the edge. Nay, he could do more than that.
When Bob came to put in his handkerchiefs he found young Van sitting
comfortably in the middle of his best silk negligée shirt.
“So you’re planning to go too, mister! Well, I’m planning to take you,
but not in my suit-case. There’s the covered basket all ready for you.
We’re going this very afternoon. You may have thought this was home,
but it isn’t. It’s only a New York studio, where one earns his bread
and butter. When you get to your final destination you’ll have all
out-of-doors to chase your tail in,--that is, if you ever have one long
enough to chase. It’s back to the old farm for you.
“But you’ve got to be mighty good, and whether you stay there or not
depends entirely on yourself. I’m risking it because you are a rummy
little chap, and I think you will be just bad enough to be lovable.”
Van cocked his head on one side, and lifted his left ear straight up,
listening as if he understood every word. He barked very confidently at
Bob, and when the time came, he entered his basket without protest. In
a basket he had come to the New York studio, and in a basket he would
leave it,--the proper way. The lid was shut and fastened, and Van
started on his second railway journey.
The rumble and jolting of the trolley car, the jostling of the crowd at
the station, the roaring, purring, grinding and shrieking of the train
were nothing to him. He had been through all that before when he was
even smaller, and nothing dreadful had come of it. Humans certainly
make a lot of fuss for nothing. So he slept peacefully, as a prince
should, only reminding his bearer that he was alive by a tiny “Yap!”
when the express train made its one stop on the way.
There his basket was opened, and he chewed Bob’s finger for a minute,
then snuggled down again, to awaken only when Bob stepped into a
carriage at the end of his railway journey.
In the carriage the lid of Van’s basket was raised, and for the whole
two-mile drive he sat up and watched everything with polite interest,
but with no vulgar astonishment. His bonny brown eyes missed nothing,
however. At last Bob jumped out, and as he went up the steps of the
honeysuckle porch, he closed the basket lid and shouted:
“Kit! Kit! Where are you?”
“Bob! You dear fellow! How did you happen to get away? Are all the
books in the world illustrated, and you off on a holiday?”
“No, not all of ’em. Got to get right back. I just ran up to bring a
present for the kid you wrote me about. Thought she’d be lonesome.
Where is she?”
“Upstairs. I’ll call her in a minute. What have you got in that basket?”
“Look out! It bites,--go easy. There! How’s that for a watch-dog?”
Out of the basket popped two pointed, velvety brown ears, erect and
courageous, then the whole head, cocked on one side, eyes dancing with
excitement, beauty and breeding in every line.
“Bob! What a darling! But, oh, I can’t keep him. It’s enough to ask Dr.
Johns to let me keep Betsy.”
“We have to take some risks in this life, you know, Kate. Come on in
and call the kid.”
Out on the carpet Van was tumbled, to be admired at all points; and
being a dog of parts, the points were many--his smooth, shining, snowy
coat, with the chestnut-brown saddle, and the delicate lines and curves
so rare in puppies of his or of any age. Mrs. Johns gave one long
look, and said:
“I don’t believe Ben will say one word. I’ll call Betsy. She’s a queer
little mite, but I think she’ll like him. Betsy! Betsy! Come here a
minute!”
Betsy came slowly down the stairs,--a very different-looking Betsy from
the weird little black-robed figure of two weeks ago, but still awkward
and shy.
“Betsy, this is Uncle Bob. See what he has brought you.”
Betsy looked.
“It’s a puppy! Pa wouldn’t have any dog to our house. They et too much.”
“He’s yours, Betsy.”
“Mine? No, he isn’t. He can’t be. What’s his name?”
“Vanart VI.,” said Bob. “Call him Van, for short. Go to Betsy, Van.”
Betsy sat down on the lower step of the stair, and Van ambled up,
wriggling, almost to her, when suddenly his eye fell on a member of
the group, who, being merely a casual visitor, had not been taken into
account at all. It was a huge yellow cat, three times as big as Van,
who, in a hand to hand, or claw to claw fight could have made ribbons
of his young lordship.
Instantly Van’s head went down, his tail to “attention,” and with
stealthy steps he went slowly toward old Tommy. A quickening of his
heart told him that his father and his father’s father’s had always
chased cats. There was a long line of sporting dogs behind him, and
here was game worthy of the blood.
Tommy’s yellow fur stiffened into bristles; his tail grew big and
threatening; he backed against the dining-room door with a low growl
and with all claws set. Van gave one short “Woof!” and started for him.
Tommy, who had met many dogs, large and small, and vanquished not a
few, was not sure that this courageous morsel could be a real dog at
all, and in that moment of hesitation the day was lost. “R-r-r-r-r!”
growled Van, in an answering challenge, and Tommy turned tail and
darted through the door into the dining-room.
That was enough. “The game is started, chase it!” whispered the blood
of his ancestors to his pumping heart. Through the swinging door into
the kitchen went a yellow streak; after it pelted a barking thing of
brown and white; out through the screen door and down the steps,--it
was Van’s first experience with steps, and the cat was gaining. He
rolled down, picked himself up, and was off again in the direction of
his flying yellow prey.
Around the corner of the house it disappeared, but Van was hard on the
scent. Soon the cat was in sight again and in a fair way to safety. A
friendly apple tree was just ahead; Tommy made one dash up the trunk
and was safe in a high crotch, whence he could look down on his tiny
foe and be ashamed of himself. Van, not being a climber, stopped
beneath the tree, yelping like mad at the lost prize, while Mrs. Johns,
Bob and Betsy looked on, too helpless with laughter to inform him, as
they should have done, that the sporting instinct should be held second
to kingly courtesy.
But Van had treed his first cat on the first run, and the field of
glory, without a question, belonged to him.
When quiet was restored, Bob turned to Betsy.
“What do you think of that, now? Don’t you like him?”
“I dunno. I never had a pet, ’cept Speckly and Banty, and they’re hens.”
“Well, I think you’ll like him when you get to know him. Can we fix him
up a place to sleep somewhere around?” said Bob.
“We can keep him in the kitchen, until he gets acquainted. Mary will
look after him, and he can sleep in the little tool-room off the back
veranda.”
Betsy made no move to go nearer or to play with him, and Aunt Kate said
aside, to Bob,
“I’m afraid it’s a mistake. She doesn’t seem to care for animals. Ben’s
away, and I don’t know what he’ll say. Oh, Bob, I’m afraid you will
have to take him back.”
“Well, wait till morning, anyway, before you decide. I’ll be here over
Sunday.”
That night a big, soft bed of blankets was made for Van on the floor
of the tool-room. He was given a supper befitting his age and state,
tucked up comfortably, and in one minute he had dropped fast asleep,
and was making up for the excitement of the day past.
In the night Betsy awakened to hear a pitiful little cry. For a moment
her thought was, “Ma’s awake and needs me!” and she jumped out of bed.
She had so often, in her mother’s illness, awakened to wait on her,
that, still drowsy from her sound sleep, she thought herself back in
the little red house. Then, as she stumbled over unwonted furniture,
she realized where she was. Groping her way to the window, she
listened. The tool-room was directly below, and behind the door of it
Van was voicing his loneliness and homesickness.
A wave of pity swept up in the heart of Betsy. Here was this tiny
dog left all alone to cry his heart out, and here was she,--with
friends,--yes, but friends not like her own self, and living a
different life from what hers had been.
Barefooted and silent, Betsy opened the door and crept softly out into
the hall. Feeling her way she went down the stairs, the soft rustle of
her little nightgown being the only sound that broke the stillness of
the house. Gently she turned the key in the lock and stepped out on the
back veranda. In the tool-room Van was still rending deaf heaven. The
door was unlocked, and Betsy gently pushed it open.
Instantly the wailing ceased. A scamper of little feet came toward her,
and she felt the cold little pads on her own as Van dug his foreclaws
into her nightgown, and tried to climb up. There was no one to look
now, and her own little homesick heart leaped to meet his. Picking him
up in her arms, she lifted the upper layer of the blanket bed, and sat
down upon it, while the puppy nestled close, with his nose tucked into
her neck, apparently asking for nothing better.
“I’m lonesome, too, Van. Maybe Aunt Kate’d be mad if I took you
upstairs. I guess I’ll just stay here. There, you pore little
feller,--it’s all right. Your Betsy’s here!”
When, in the morning, after a long, vain search for Betsy, Mrs. Johns
opened the door of the silent tool-room, she did not speak. She went
and hunted up Bob, who was taking a turn on the porch before breakfast.
Together they peeped in, quietly.
“I wish Ben was here to see them!” she whispered. Then, as they turned
softly away, she added,
“You needn’t take him away, Bob. That’s settled. It is the first thing
that has really seemed to open the child’s heart. We needed just that
key.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: “Swift as a bird, Betsy was there to meet him.”]
CHAPTER V
VAN’S FIRST LESSONS
Thus began a new life for both Betsy and Van. Gay, smiling days they
were, and, for the most part, full to the brim.
It was country all around the Hospital, which was itself a big and
famous one. Dr. Johns was the head doctor, and when he said “Come,”
people came there to work, and when he said “Go,” they went away. It
had been a great venture for Bob to bring a little dog to a place
where everybody was serious and quiet and orderly. Dr. Johns, in his
way, was a sort of king on the Hospital Hill, and had much dignity to
keep up. What would happen if a riotous little prince of a dog should
try to usurp Dr. Johns’ authority, or upset his dignity? It would not
do at all.
But there Van was, and Betsy had adopted him for her own. So, when Dr.
Johns came home and met the new-comer, he was polite, as he always was,
but perhaps a certain warmth was lacking. He remarked that Van was a
very pretty dog, but Betsy felt the chill of it, and she ran away with
her pet tucked under her arm.
“I think Betsy feels hurt a bit,” said Aunt Kate.
“Hurt? How? I said nothing to hurt her.”
“I think you did not intend to, Ben, but your manner toward the dog was
none too cordial. I think he is going to help us solve our problem of
Betsy.”
“Well, my dear, I cannot think that it is a good plan for us to keep a
dog at an institution. It is a bad example.”
“But Betsy loves him, and she’ll be so disappointed if he is sent
away. I think he’ll be a good little fellow, and he’s a thoroughbred,
you know, with a pedigree as long as your arm.”
“A thoroughbred, is he? And Betsy loves him? Well, well, if Betsy wants
him, and if you want him, of course that settles it.”
“I think I saw a tear in her eye as she went out,” said Mrs. Johns,
pushing her point in the path of least resistance.
“Hm! You did, did you? Well, you tell Betsy for me that she may keep
dogs all over the place if she wants to. By the way, tell her to bring
him back again. I didn’t get a good look at him.”
And the beauty of the wee rascal did the rest.
Dr. Johns practically gave him the keys of the castle. He graduated by
leaps and bounds from first lessons in the kitchen, where a basket was
installed for him, and where he slept at night. As soon as he was big
enough to climb up and down the steps of the honeysuckle porch, the
world outside was his also.
He was too small to take it all in as yet, for a scamper across the
grounds would have been a good half-mile. There were four great
buildings of brick and stone, and all around them grew noble trees
and beautiful flowers on green, velvety lawns. There were ponds, too,
swarming with gleaming goldfish and pollywogs of all sizes, where the
big and little frogs croaked in the warm spring evenings. Then there
were long processions of people,--patients from the Hospital, who went
out to walk every day when the sun shone. Van liked these, and would
stand and bark with joy every time they went past. Also he barked at
the red squirrels that chattered back at him from the trees, at the fat
robins, who pulled countless fat worms out of the ground to feed to
their greedy babies, and at the stately blackbirds who stalked around
on the same errand. Together Betsy and Van roamed the place over,
unmolested.
It was joy to Van, just being alive. The sunshine seemed to sparkle
around his little white body, as he rolled on the grass, or pawed at
the loose loam in the flower-beds; and it was a warm caress, when,
tired after a chase for butterflies, he dropped, panting, at the foot
of the steps where Betsy sat.
Besides Dr. and Mrs. Johns and Betsy, and Treesa the maid, there was
in the house a cook, Mary, who made nice things for people to eat,
and who was one of those dear Irish souls of whom the world cannot
have too many. She knew where to place a cooky jar so that a little
girl could find her way to it unhindered, and she knew also how to
smuggle tid-bits to a little dog who was supposed to live entirely on
dog-biscuit and milk. Then there was Thatcher, a convalescent patient,
who came over every day from the Hospital to help with the work.
Thatcher welcomed the Prince as one who is grounded in the knowledge of
dogs.
“My father used to train dogs, Mrs. Johns, and you’ll want him trained
right, or he’ll be good for nothing. I’d like to do what I can.”
“I shall be so thankful if you will. Now is the time for his character
to be made or unmade.”
“I’ll be glad to train him, ma’am.” Thatcher straightened up and looked
very grand and important, and Aunt Kate felt a load roll from her
shoulders; for it was no mean responsibility to bring up a puppy so
that he should be an honor to his fathers and an ornament to society.
So Thatcher began his own particular system of training. His first idea
was that a dog should be taught the art of swimming.
Now, every dog knows how to swim without being taught, but Thatcher
thought it would be pretty sport to see his Lordship go after sticks
and the like, and swim back with them in his mouth. So one morning
he tucked Van under his arm, and carried him off to the pond, Betsy
following close at his heels.
This was something new. Van rather liked a bath, when Mrs. Johns or
Treesa soused him all over in a tub of warm soap-suds, and rinsed
him and dried him with a towel. But a tub like this--all wide and
shiny, with blue sky at the bottom, and green trees and red buildings
standing on their heads all around the edge,--this was not to be taken
lightly--it was too large an affair.
Van sniffed at the brim of it, put his paw in, and drew it out again,
wet and cold. He looked up at Thatcher for an explanation, when all
of a sudden, without any preparation whatever, he was picked up and
thrown, as if he were a stone, straight into the middle of the pond.
Down he went, gasping,--away under--down--down--swirling over and
over. Then up he came, kicking and spluttering. He shook the water out
of his frightened eyes, and struck out for shore and Thatcher, whom he
had not as yet connected with the outrage. You would have thought he
had been swimming for years.
“Hurrah! Good boy!” cried Thatcher. “Now go after that stick.” He cast
a bit of wood in. “See that? Now go for it!”
Van looked at the stick, and then at Thatcher. He may have thought of
the poor stick that doubtless would be compelled to swim back as he had
to, but he made no effort to rescue it.
“Go after it, I say!” And Van found himself hurtling through the air
once more. When he came up from the cold depths, the piece of wood was
at his side, but still he did not see how it had anything to do with
him, and he swam back once more to Thatcher.
Again he was thrown in, and farther than before. This time as he made
his way to shore, he put two and two together, and made four out of it.
One, it was Thatcher who had done the deed, and he was not to be
trusted; two, he did not need swimming lessons; three, the water was
cold and he was tired; and four, he did not intend to give Thatcher
another chance to play so contemptible a trick upon him. He turned
suddenly and made for the far side of the pond.
Swift as a bird, Betsy was there to meet him. He shook himself, and she
gathered him, all dripping, to her bosom, and ran for the house.
That was all he wanted of the pond. One more lesson he had, when Betsy
was not by to rescue him. He was thrown in again and again, until he
was a thoroughly disgusted little dog, with a hatred for the very
sight of water. From that time on he never willingly wet his feet. He
hated even his bath and would run and hide if any one mentioned the
word to him. But he learned that baths must be taken, no matter how
disagreeable. A Prince must be clean, if he would live in a palace; and
Betsy, in her new zeal for soap and water, took him in charge herself,
and continued to scrub him faithfully.
The rest of Thatcher’s efforts at training resulted in a series of
failures. Thatcher was willing, but Van was not. He did not intend to
be trained by his valet, and one, too, who had betrayed him at the
outset. Where confidence is lacking one cannot get great results in
dealing with a wilful son of royalty.
The next instructor was more successful.
Dr. Peters, one of the young physicians at the Hospital, came over one
morning on an errand. He was made acquainted with Van and duly admired
him.
“Have you taught him any tricks, Miss Betsy?”
“No, I don’t know how to teach him.”
“Let me try him. He looks as bright as a button. You can teach anything
to a dog like that, if you go at it in the right way. Come here, Van.”
Van came, expecting a game of romps, or, at the very least, a pat on
the head.
“Dead Dog!” said Dr. Peters; and Van found himself unaccountably flat
on his back, waving his helpless paws in the air.
“Dead Dog!” Dr. Peters repeated,--“Dead! Dead! Now shut your
eyes,--tight!” Two fingers closed their lids.
Van struggled. This was an insult to his royal person. But he was held
there. Then, of a sudden, at the word “Police!” he was released.
“Get him a piece of cake, Miss Betsy. Now try it again, Van. Dead Dog!”
Van looked just an instant at Dr. Peters, as if he were trying to
understand clearly; and then, thump! down he went, lying as still as
the doorstep itself, until he heard the word of relief. Then he was up,
jumping and capering as if he himself had thought out the whole thing.
The next time Dr. Peters came over, Van saw him from afar, and promptly
plumped down, not waiting for the command; and there he lay, prone on
the sidewalk, until the word “Police!” released him.
But he never liked doing this particular trick, and would do it for no
one else without much coaxing. It was not seemly for him to take so
humble a position, and all his life, whenever he was told to do “Dead
Dog,” he would first go through all the other tricks he had ever been
taught, hoping that people would forget about this disagreeable one,
and pass it by.
All puppies, whether they are thoroughbreds or mongrels, begin life by
practising their sharp little teeth on something, and generally they
care little whether it be a lace curtain or a fine Bokhara rug. From
the first Van was taught that he must be full owner of the thing he
might wish to destroy.
Betsy gave him one of her discarded copper-toed shoes to try his tiny
new teeth upon.
“Now, Vanny-Boy, this shoe is yours; no, no,--_this_ one that I give
you. You mustn’t touch this other one.”
Van fell to upon his gift. Bit by bit he demolished the leather--the
scraps lay all over the floor. Down to the bare bones of it he worried
his way, and then he began on the sole. In a day or so he had this also
in shreds. Only the heel and the bit of copper remained to tell of his
busy moments. All this time the other shoe lay near by, but he never
looked at it. When the task he had set himself was finished, he came
wriggling to Betsy, who offered him the mate. Then and then only did he
seize the other shoe, and it soon followed in the way of its fellow.
Under the little writing-desk in Betsy’s room was an old and
dilapidated carpet-covered footstool, which showed unmistakable
signs of a long and useful life. Van, who loved playing at Betsy’s
feet, discovered the rag-tag-and-bobtail effect of it, and received
permission to worry the poor old thing. Little by little the carpet
grew thinner, but it held out for many days.
One morning Betsy went in town with Aunt Kate, leaving Van safe in the
kitchen with Mary.
That is, she _thought_ he was safe. Van lay in his basket under the
table, until Mary went down in the cellar. Then he arose, and went
toward the swinging door that led into the dining-room. He had learned
a secret about that door at the time of the yellow-cat episode. He
pushed it--very gently. It yielded; a little more--it opened, swung
back again, and struck him right on the tip of his little black nose.
He winked hard, and sat back a moment to get his bearings; then he went
at it again. With his whole weight thrown against it, it swung widely,
and with a dash he was through, and on the other side before it could
close again. He was free, with the whole house before him, and no one
to say him nay.
But it was not a voyage of discovery on which he was bent. He had
business on hand. A young and energetic dog should not be idle, and
there was work to do.
Up the stairs he clambered,--that was the hardest of all, for every
step must be gained with a stretch, a reach, a hump, and a scramble. At
last his little brown head peeped over the top landing, and the way was
clear to Betsy’s room.
No hesitation. His duty lay before him. He headed straight for the old
footstool, sought out the weakest spot, just where he had left off
yesterday. It was no sin; the stool was his very own, and where is the
monarch who may not, if he likes, chew his own footstool?
Very quiet and busy he was, for a time. Bit by bit that barrier of
heavy carpet warp must be worn away. He had no pick and shovel, like
the miners and sappers under a fortress; his only weapons were his
sharp little teeth, and the small nails on his forepaws; but he went
bravely to work.
He chewed and he chewed; he never paused for a minute; he never gave
the enemy an instant to recover lost ground. If he had been a soldier
in war-time, he would have been cheered on as a hero, so manfully did
he hold to his task.
At last he got a tooth in, and could tear at the strong linen walls.
The breach grew wider--there was room for his paw. He inserted it, and
drew out a fascinating bit of plunder; curly, woody stuff it was.
A volley of dust from the defense struck him full in the nose and made
him sneeze and choke. This opposition only made his spirits soar the
higher. Tooth and nail he struck back. He tore down the whole barrier,
and rushed in on the defenseless excelsior.
The fierce frenzy of destruction--that savage instinct that has made
other princes and kings tear down whole cities--took possession of him.
Clouds of dust rolled up from the interior, and filled his nostrils
like the smoke of battle. He dove into the very center of the core of
the inside of the middle of the last dungeon of the fortress. Up heaved
the excelsior before his frantic onslaught, flying in every direction.
It lay in heaps, around him, over him, under him, in front of him,
behind him. It fell on the remotest breastwork of furniture.
The rout was complete! No explosion could have rent that footstool more
disastrously. Van shook off the ruins that had landed on his back; lay
down on the empty shell of what was no longer and never more would be a
footstool, and proceeded to divide the spoils, so to speak.
He worked through long and short division, and was worrying through a
problem in fractions which concerned the last fragment that could still
be called carpet, when Mrs. Johns and Betsy appeared in the doorway.
Through a haze they dimly saw a brown and white morsel of live joy,
triumphing in the midst of a drifting mass of excelsior. Van lifted his
head proudly and looked at them, as if he would say,
“Alone I did it! Excelsior!”
CHAPTER VI
BETSY’S FIRST LESSONS
It was a summer full of events for both Van and his mistress. Slowly
and patiently Aunt Kate corrected Betsy’s uncouth ways, and the book
of “Manners” grew. Betsy took smaller mouthfuls now, used her fork
properly and ate quietly. She learned her tricks like Van, having to be
told but once. If she forgot she corrected herself.
[Illustration: “‘I can stand it a week.’”]
Aunt Kate said one day to Uncle Ben,
“The child ‘eats’ everything I say to her, as if she were greedy for
it, and what’s more, she digests it.”
“She’s just at the impressionable age,” said Dr. Johns. “Look at her
out on the lawn there with the dog. When she thinks no one is looking
at her she gambols almost as gracefully as he does.”
“I’m so glad she came to us. Everything seems different. I feel as if I
had a rare, strange plant to tend, and when she grows out of that hard
little bud of shyness, she’ll be the rose of my heart’s desire. It was
a great inspiration, getting her into pretty clothes at the very start.
I really think she is trying to live up to them.”
“I think it more likely that she is trying to live up to her Aunt
Kate,” Uncle Ben chivalrously said, and as he started for the office,
there was on his face the smile that Aunt Kate loved to see--the smile
that made all the Hospital patients love him.
Betsy came in with her book as soon as she saw him go.
“I’m getting a lot of manners, Aunt Kate. My book’s ’most full.”
“I am so glad, dear, and you are getting them by heart, too. I
haven’t heard you say ‘ain’t’ for a week. By the way, how about those
finger-nails? Let me see.”
But instead of showing them Betsy snapped her hands behind her.
“Let me look, dear. Haven’t you remembered?”
“No--no’m--not much. I try, but they just chew theirselves when I’m not
thinking. They aren’t fitten to see.”
Aunt Kate took the two little hands in her own delicate ones. They lay
palms up, showing a row of callous spots at the base of the fingers.
For a moment dear Aunt Kate looked; then she softly stooped and kissed
them. The child stood wide-eyed, wondering.
“What’d you do that for? They aren’t pretty.”
“Because every one of those spots means that a little girl has helped
her mother, and I love them. I almost wish that I could have some
myself for so fine a reason.”
She turned the hands over.
“But these--these--oh, my little Betsy! To trim such good hands in
such a sorry way. Nails are intended to be the ornaments of a hand,
quite as much, and more, than rings are. Every nail should have a
crescent moon at its base, and another little pearl moon-rise at the
tip. There should be no ragged edges or hang-nails. I’ve told you so
many times. Now I shall have to do something to make you remember.
“Remember, too, dear, that I do this because I love you, and I want you
to be sweet in every way.”
Mrs. Johns went to her desk, and returned with a bottle of India ink
and a small brush.
“Now, Betsy, as long as the edges of your nails are rough and black,
the middle might as well be black, too.”
Quickly Aunt Kate put a drop of ink in the center of each nail. Betsy
held her breath with the surprise of it.
“Hold them out like that till they’re dry. If the spots come off when
you wash your hands, I’ll put on more. When you see them you will think
not to bite your nails, and you must keep them on for a week. By that
time your nails will grow out, and then I’ll show you how to take
proper care of them.”
“Oh, Aunt Kate, please! Must I wear them like that to the table--right
before Uncle Ben? What will he say?”
“Uncle Ben will think as I do, that the black spots look no worse than
the close-bitten edges.”
Tears came in Betsy’s eyes. It was not like Aunt Kate to punish. For
a moment she stood with quivering lips, looking down at the queer,
ink-spotted finger-tips. Then she straightened up.
“I can stand it a week. You can stand anything you _got_ to stand. I
guess this’ll be a warnin’ to me.”
Not another whisper of rebellion came from her lips. She wore her
badges of disgrace manfully, hiding her hands, if she could, when any
one came near her. Uncle Ben looked at them, then at Mrs. Johns, but
never a word did he say, and Betsy to this day does not know what he
thought about them.
Aunt Kate replaced the spots as they came off, and the week dragged by.
Then, one morning, Aunt Kate came into Betsy’s room, and instead of
the bottle of ink, she carried a dainty little box.
“See here, Betsy.”
Betsy looked, and saw, under the satin-lined lid, a tiny pair of curved
scissors, a nail file, a buffer with a silver handle, a box of rosy
ointment--all the things that go to make up a manicure set.
“Now, let me see the nails again, Betsy dear. Have you remembered all
the time?”
“I forgot twice, Aunt Kate, but I got black on my lips, so I had to
remember.”
“Why, they’ve grown out beautifully! Good!”
With a bowl of warm, soapy water and a towel, the fingers were
soaked, cleaned and dried. Deftly Aunt Kate cut each tip to a white
“moon-rise,” and with an orange stick she found the beginnings of the
crescent at the base. When the nails had been polished Betsy did not
know them for her own.
“There! They look like rose petals. And now you can do it for yourself
next time. This case is for you.”
“Aunt Kate!”
“Yes, dear.”
“I’m awful much obliged, and--and--I like you a lot. And--may I do
Van’s nails for him, too?”
“Why, if you want to. But his paws have to be on the ground, and he
never bites his nails.”
“Well, I’m never going to bite mine any more. Van chews other things,
though, Aunt Kate, and--and--may we have another ball, please? He’s
chewed that little rubber one all up.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Betsy. We’ll try him with a rope-end. I
found just the thing in the store-room this morning. Here it is, and
I’ll tie a knot at each end. See how he likes that. A rubber ball every
day is rather expensive.”
The rope proved highly successful, and Betsy and Van at either end made
a great team. Betsy jerked and pulled and Van growled and shook. Then
Van got the rope and flew all over the house and the lawn, and when
Betsy finally caught her end there was a terrific growling and barking.
Van liked it so much that he soon got in the way of trailing his rope
on all occasions, hunting for some one who could be coaxed to play with
him. Even a neighbor’s dog was invited to take part in the game; but,
although he wagged his tail pleasantly, he showed no intelligence, and
Van gave him up in disgust.
There was another beautiful game, even better than Rope, because the
whole family could play it of an evening, and Van was never happier
than when he could stir up everything and everybody on the place. This
was “Hide-and-Seek.” Mrs. Johns or the Doctor would hold Van tightly,
his little body quivering with excitement, while Betsy hid in some
corner, behind a curtain or screen. Then she would call,
“Coop!”
At the sound Van would be released, and would dart like an arrow in the
direction of Betsy’s voice. It never took him long to find her, for his
little nose was even keener than his eyes and ears.
With a joyful bark he would pounce on her and drag her back by her
skirts, growling as if he had caught a lion. Then somebody else must
hide and be found.
Once, when Van and Betsy had strayed as far as the park gates, an old
hen loomed up in their path. She was bigger than Van, but a puppy
who could tree a cat could surely get some sport out of a large bird
like that. After her went Van, and Mrs. Dorking took to her awkward
legs. These, not filling entirely the necessity for speed, she added
wing-power to the effort. Squawking, and frightened almost out of her
feathers, she skimmed the ground, with Van close at her heels--if hens
have heels.
Betsy laughed heartily at the funny sight, and that was a grave
mistake, as later events proved. Of course Mrs. Dorking got away with
all her feathers, so Van gave up the chase, and came back panting and
wildly enthusiastic.
Van’s education did not consist of tricks and games alone. No, indeed!
Fox terriers have a special use in the world; they are, above all
things, a breed of rat-catchers, and Van was a sportsman, to the tips
of his brown ears.
One morning he clambered out of his basket in the kitchen just in time
to see a small, gray, furry thing dodge behind the basket and into
the pantry. He did not stop to question; every instinct in him told
him that this was Game. Like a flash he was after it. Mary was mixing
pancakes at the far end of the pantry, and it went right under her
feet. She jumped and screamed and nearly landed on Van’s toes.
“It’s a mouse! It’s a mouse! Quick, Van! There it goes!”
The door of the closet where the pots and pans were kept stood ajar. In
went the mouse; in went Van. The mouse went under a skillet, Van turned
it over and jumped after; he chased it around a vinegar jug; he knocked
over a pile of pans, and they fell with a terrible clatter; the mouse
crept under one, and Van rooted up the whole of them, and sent them
flying galley-west, while Mary took turns screaming and laughing.
Van hunted the mouse through the pantry, out into the kitchen again,
and behind a broom in the corner. Bang! That was the broom falling.
Pounce! That was Van, and Mrs. Mouse was no more.
By this time the whole Johns family was on the spot. They could not,
unless they had been stone deaf, have escaped hearing the racket. Van
was in his element. Not only had he brought down his first game, but he
had an admiring audience, which he loved of all things. He swaggered
around and tossed the mouse into the air, as if by so doing he could
make them all understand just what a grand, brave dog he was. Lastly,
he came proudly to lay his prize at the feet of his beloved mistress.
And Betsy spoiled his fun by taking the mouse away from him. It was all
right for Van to kill a mouse, she argued, because mice are harmful,
but one should not gloat over it. Van did not see things that way. He
gave one grieved look at the unfeeling Betsy, jumped into his basket
and sulked.
Then Betsy added insult to injury by pulling him out of the basket and
carrying him upstairs. Aunt Kate, passing by, saw the child on the
window seat. Very busy Betsy was with something, and that something was
Van, who was wriggling tremendously.
“See here just a minute, Aunt Kate. Ai--aren’t they nice?”
She exhibited Van’s paws, with every nail scraped clean and white.
“He didn’t like it a mite, but he knew it had to be did, or he couldn’t
be a gentleman. I washed ’em with a nail brush to get the mouse off.”
The catching of the mouse was the clinching nail in Dr. Johns’ respect
for Van. He looked upon him now as a good and useful dog, and no
longer as a mere plaything.
As for Betsy, that evening, beside her napkin at the dinner table,
there lay a tiny white box, and in it shone a gold circlet set with a
tiny diamond. Uncle Ben’s card lay on top, with the words
“For the hand with the little pink nails.”
[Illustration: “‘Go back, Van!’”]
CHAPTER VII
VAN GOES TO CHURCH
Mr. Johns went over and closed the door carefully, when Betsy had been
excused after lunch.
“By the way, Kate, I received a letter this morning from that father of
hers.”
“Oh, the poor baby! He isn’t going to bother her, is he?”
“Read it.”
Mrs. Johns took the soiled bit of paper and read:
“Dr. Johns, Sir, I bin told you have taken my Betsy and are
a-bringing of her up. I am expecting a good job up-State, and if I
git it I can take her off your hands. I need her to help my new woman
keep house for me who aint very strong, but she can train Betsy all
right. You can just put her on the train at New York, and she can
come strait here without no change, and she wont be no more expense
to you,
Yours truly,
Alvin Wixon.”
“Oh, Ben!” gasped Mrs. Johns. “You won’t let him?”
“Of course not. He’s a low, drunken scoundrel, and his first wife
starved to death. He can easily be proved unfit as a guardian; no court
would sustain any claim of his, and I can be appointed Betsy’s legal
guardian. She’s a bright, capable child, and it would be a pity to have
such good material wasted washing dishes for a stepmother, who probably
would not be any kinder to her than her father has been.”
“Oh, Ben, we mustn’t let it happen! Why, I couldn’t let her go now.
She’s like my own, and growing dearer every day. Have you answered the
letter?”
“Yes. I told him the facts of the case. I think he will make no further
trouble.”
“I hope not. Dear, dear! I wish the child would show more affection for
me. Perhaps it is just timidity, but she looks like a startled fawn
when I kiss her. The only thing so far that seems to reach her is Van.”
“Don’t hurry her. It’ll come. She can’t help loving you, Kate. Nobody
could. But she’s not accustomed to the shows of love. Van is a dog. He
simply forces himself on her. If she doesn’t cuddle him, he cuddles
her. He’s the most taking bit I ever saw on four legs.”
“If he can only break down that uncanny coldness! If she would only be
a child instead of a little old woman, I could get at her.”
“Wait,” replied Dr. Johns. “At this stage Van is the educating
principle in matters of the heart. You are doing well in other ways. By
the way, she ought to know other children.”
“There are none on the Hill-Top of the kind I want her to know now.
I’m trying to improve her English, and for a little while I want her
to hear only the best. When school opens, that will help. I’ll tell
you,--I might send her in town to Sunday School. She’ll hear correct
English there, and see children who have nice manners.”
So Betsy started to Sunday School. She wore her prettiest clothes and
walked stiffly, as if trying to do her duty by the dainty garments. She
was introduced to a teacher, and for a few Sundays Aunt Kate asked no
questions, waiting for developments. Betsy went dutifully, but made no
sign.
At last Aunt Kate said,
“Do you like your Sunday School, Betsy?”
“Good enough. The folks there think that God punishes you for your
sins. I know better. I’ve been awful bad sometimes and He hasn’t
punished me a mite.”
“I think we are punished when we break God’s laws. Sometimes we are
punished by seeing the ones we love suffer.”
Betsy thought a moment.
“Maybe so,” she said at last. “When I’ve been bad, Ma was sorry, and
that made me sorry.”
“I think, little Betsy,” said Aunt Kate, slowly, “that when we are born
we have in us the seeds of either good or bad, and it is the seeds we
care for and train as we grow up, that make us good or evil. How are
you getting on with the girls in the class?”
“Oh, all right, I guess. I don’t get acquainted much. They’re sort
of--different, or else--_I’m_ queer. But I’m watchin’ ’em, Aunt Kate,
like I do you at the table, and I don’t feel so different as I did at
first.”
“Good! Everything will come out right after a while, when the girls
know my Betsy as well as I do.”
Betsy did not answer, but there was a soft little light in her eyes.
She continued her attendance, and Van, who had watched her weekly
disappearance, dressed in her Sunday best, determined to make a closer
investigation of affairs. There must be some special charm about these
daytime excursions from which he was excluded.
One fine Sabbath morning he was on the lawn, sunning himself, when he
saw Betsy come out of the house, book in hand, best hat on, and start
down the hill toward town. Van dropped in happily behind her.
“Go back, Van!” said Betsy.
Van tossed his royal head and ran on, pretending that he was bent on
his own affairs.
“I’ll get rid of him when I get on the car,” thought Betsy.
She climbed on at the trolley-station, and did not see the little brown
and white streak dashing madly along behind, clear into the town.
There were many stops for the church-goers, so Van was able to keep
the car in sight. It stopped in front of the church just as the Sunday
School bell was ringing, and all the good little Episcopalian children
were walking sedately in at the door, dressed in their prettiest and
cleanest Sunday-go-to-meeting frocks and coats. As Betsy mounted the
steps she was greeted by a member of her class.
Just then Van ambled up, with his tongue out, and his eye lighted with
the excitement of adventure.
“There’s your dog, Betsy.”
“Oh, my goodness! I thought I got away from him. Go home, Van! Go
straight home, I tell you--this minute!”
Van dropped his head, lowered his tail slightly, and turned his back
dutifully, looking sideways to see if Betsy were keeping an eye upon
him. But she had disappeared in the doorway.
Van went a few steps toward home, then stopped to consider. Betsy being
out of sight, at the very least he might take a look around and see
what a church was like.
He turned and went back to the stone steps, climbed them slowly, and
went inside the open vestibule.
“Get out!” said the sexton to Van, not knowing that he was addressing
royalty.
Van got out, and the sexton went into the big empty part of the church,
to see that everything was ready for the evening meeting.
Once more Van entered the vestibule. One of the teachers came out of
the Sunday School room for a minute, and then returned. He did not
bother to look at Van.
But Van saw something. That door swung both ways, and had no
latch--like the door between the pantry and dining-room at home. This
was luck indeed. Van knew how to work that kind of door. You listen
a moment to make sure that no one is coming from the other side to
bang into your nose; next you stand on your hind legs and throw your
whole weight on the door; then, when it swings open, you make a quick
dash through the crack before it can come back at you and squeeze your
tail--and there you are!
Van tried it. It worked! No one saw him. There was a man on a platform,
but his eyes were shut and his head was bowed. All the little
Episcopalian children were kneeling, and their heads, too, were bowed;
the teachers were doing the same thing. Van did not know what it meant,
but he walked calmly up the aisle.
A familiar white hat was bobbing at the end of one of the seats. Van
saw it and made his way in that direction. Just as the prayer ended
with a resounding “Amen!” Van plumped himself down contentedly at
Betsy’s feet, and looked innocently upward.
“Van!” she whispered. “Van, you bad dog, what are you doing here? I
told you to go home.”
Van put his nose on the floor between his forepaws, and sighed
peacefully, as if he had not heard her. Unless force were used, he
intended to stay and see the performance through.
Betsy’s heart was filled with misgivings; but rather than run the
gauntlet of the whole school’s eyes, with a dog under her arm, she
decided to hold him until the service was over. The teacher had not
noticed; her eyes were on the heads and not the feet of the children.
Betsy tucked Van under the seat, where he lay until the lesson was
over--as good a dog as ever lived, and far better than some of the
children, who found it hard to keep their minds on holy things, with a
small brown head and two bright eyes popping out every time a question
from the catechism brought forth a childish answer.
Once more the superintendent lifted his voice in prayer, and Van crept
softly out from under the seat to see if he could find out what it
really meant.
Now the hymn was given out, the pianist took his seat, and began to run
over the tune. This was fine! Van liked music and he pricked up his
ears. Behind Betsy’s back he jumped up on the seat, and began to roll
his eyes and cock his head to one side as if to take in the full beauty
of the notes.
A small boy began to giggle, and the children all over the room craned
their heads over the backs of the seats; some even climbed up to peer
over, and the whisper went around,
“There’s a dog in Sunday School!”
Betsy tried to repress him without being noticed. But there was a
decided tide of attention setting her way. The teacher began to take
notice, too.
Betsy’s face was crimson. She could not carry Van out, just as they
were beginning to sing. She put down her hand and whispered out of the
corner of her mouth,
“Behave yourself, Van!”
Now the unlucky star of a certain small boy decreed that on this
particular Sunday he should be asked to display his accomplishments by
accompanying the children with his violin, on which he had been taking
lessons for nearly four months. A proud father and mother had urged him
on, and there he stood beside the pianist, with his bow raised.
Down it came on the strings in the first strains of “From Greenland’s
Icy Mountains,” the voices of all the school joining in, in fine,
childish harmony.
At the first wail of the instrument Van leaped to a point of vantage
on the seat. He did not wait for a hymn-book; he simply lifted up his
voice and joined the chorus in a song without words--a long-drawn,
mournful howl! He could sing that hymn with the best of them; he would
show them!
“Stop, Van!” Betsy tried to shut him off by putting her hand over his
mouth, but he wriggled free, barked an evil defiance, and continued his
heartrending strains. Who was she that she should interfere with the
religious devotions of the son of kings, a hero, and a singer of songs?
The teachers tried their best to look shocked, and the superintendent
openly grinned.
[Illustration: SHE FLED WITH HIM DOWN THE AISLE]
Betsy no longer shunned publicity. She was flooded with it anyway.
Seizing the singer she fled with him down the aisle, leaving the
room swept by a gale of laughter that might have been heard almost to
India’s coral strand! It was a shocking end to a devotional exercise.
Betsy did not go back; she took Van out in the vestibule and spanked
him. She haled him home; she told him that he was a young imp; and that
if ever he followed her to Sunday School again she would know why.
After this Van decided to try another service. Mary the cook loved
him too, and Mary was a good Catholic. Perhaps he was too old and too
musically-inclined for Sunday School. The next Sunday he followed Mary
as she started to Mass.
“Look out, Mary!” called Treesa, “Van’s following you.”
“Ah, sure now the Boy-Heart can go down the hill wit’ me. I’ll hunt him
home before I goes in.”
At the door of Mary’s church she “hunted him home,” and he turned as if
to go, but the minute her back was turned he was behind her, and behind
her he marched up the steps and up the aisle. In Mary’s pew he took his
station, and at Mary’s feet he lay.
Father O’Givney came down from his pulpit after Mass, and Mary
apologized.
“The Boy-O folleyed me, Father O’Givney, an’ I hunted him home, but
right back he came. He sure do be liking it here, an’ a foine church it
is, to be sure. He’s the great Boy--that.”
“I’ve a dog of my own at home,” said Father O’Givney. He was Irish,
too, and Mary’s soft brogue was to him like the music of the Ould Sod.
“Van’s behaving well, isn’t he?”
“Sure, he’s always the gentleman!” answered Mary, and Van was left,
unrebuked and undisturbed.
No one will ever know how many times Van went to Mass with Mary. She
kept her own counsel. But I have my suspicions that to-day Van is a
full-fledged Roman Catholic, in good and regular standing; and I am
sure that, if it were orthodox to admit dogs into the fold, Mary would,
long ago, have had his name entered on the books.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT STORM
[Illustration: “‘Heaven be praised for savin’ him!’”]
Life on the Hill-Top moved serenely, and Van grew like a weed. His
church-going did not make a saint of him, but ever, he grew dearer to
the heart of Betsy. I suspect, even, that the occasional wrongdoings of
the aristocratic little scapegrace only endeared him the more. His sins
were all sins of a high-strung, spirited disposition, and he was so
human in his fallings from grace and his funny repentances, that Mrs.
Johns would look at him, laugh, and exclaim,
“You may say what you like. He certainly _looks_ like a _dog_; but he
isn’t. He’s ‘folks.’”
One day a man who worked on the Hospital grounds came to the kitchen
door and said excitedly to Mary,
“Is Van in the house?”
“No, I’m thinkin’ he’s out. Is anything wrong?”
“There’s a mad dog loose. He’s just bitten Joe Wood’s collie, and has
gone away down town. They’re after him with guns.”
“The saints preserve us! I hope the darlint isn’t in the way of him!”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him, but you’d better look after him,
wherever he is.” And the man hurried off.
Mary dropped her work and ran out to the road. There, trotting calmly
home in an opposite direction from that which the mad dog had taken,
came Van, quite unconscious of any trouble that might be brewing for
him.
“Heaven be praised for savin’ him!” said Mary. “Come in, ye little
spalpeen. My heart do be beatin’ that hard I can’t get me breath.”
She ran to tell the family what had happened and just then the man came
back to report that the mad dog had been killed, after biting two or
three other dogs.
Well, it was much to be thankful for that Van was safe, but when Betsy
came back from a trip to town, she learned that an order had been
issued from the powers that be, and all dogs, for the remainder of the
summer, must be either chained or muzzled.
“Muzzled he shall not be,” said Mrs. Johns. “If a mad dog came along,
much good would a muzzle do! The chain is better. Poor Van, it’s a
burning shame, just as you were getting to be almost an angel, and now
it’s confinement for you until the first of September.”
So Van’s liberty was taken away from him, and, to make it harder, his
beloved Betsy fell ill. An attack of tonsilitis it was, and Van must
not be allowed to disturb her. Thus, even in the house there was no
liberty. Betsy’s door was shut, and the lonesome little prisoner might
not have her comforting. Mary was good to him in the kitchen, but at
every opportunity he would slip away upstairs and paw at Betsy’s door.
There was no way to separate him from his beloved mistress, except to
keep him outside the house. So all day long he ran sadly up and down,
with his chain attached to a long wire that stretched from the apple
tree to the honeysuckle porch. At night there was a warm bed made for
him on a lounge in the shelter of the porch, and he could lie there,
too, in the daytime, if he chose. But always there was the hated chain.
During the days of his imprisonment, Thatcher made it his pleasure to
come for him, and take him for long walks in the woods, and these were
his only really happy times. In the woods there were no mad dogs. So
the chain would be loosened, and Van would enjoy a wild hour of liberty.
The days passed, and at last came one when Dr. Johns said that Betsy
was better, and might sit up in bed for a little while. That day Van,
after eating his dinner in the kitchen, went slyly up the back stairs,
and put his paw on the door of the forbidden room. And lo! it opened to
him, and there sat his mistress, propped among her pillows.
“Vanny-Boy! Dear Vanny-Boy!” cried she, and he flew on the wings of
love, leaped upon the bed, and cried and moaned and kissed her ear as
if she had been long away. Betsy snuggled him down by her side, and he
went to sleep with his nose on her knee.
Mrs. Johns, coming in later, found him there.
“Please let him stay, Aunt Kate. I’ve missed him so, and I’m almost
well now.”
So, after that, every afternoon, when he came in from his walk, he
spent a happy hour with his dear mistress.
One night, after a hot and breathless day, Dr. and Mrs. Johns were
sitting with Betsy in her little room. The lights were out to make it
cooler, and the windows were open to the west. A puff of wind stirred
the curtains and died away again. Dr. Johns walked to the window and
looked out.
“We shall have a storm to-night,” said he. “There’s a bank of clouds
brewing something over there in the northwest.”
“I think I’ll have a look around,” said Mrs. Johns, “and see that
everything is safe, in case of a rain or blow.”
“Couldn’t we bring Van in the house, Uncle Ben?”
“I think he’s quite safe where he is. There’s a matting screen to keep
off the wind and rain at the open end, and nothing can get through that
mass of honeysuckle along the front. He’s better off where he is. Now,
don’t worry, just go to sleep. It is bedtime, and everything will be
fixed shipshape.”
Betsy sighed and said nothing more. Mrs. Johns saw that the little
Prince was safe under his blanket on the couch and all cosy for the
night, and she did not notice the pleading in his sad eyes as she gave
him a final pat and left him alone.
Every one was quiet for the night, except Betsy, who lay tossing
restlessly on her bed in the dark.
Outside, far off in the northwest, a strange whisper in the air grew to
a mutter and a rumble. Betsy wrapped herself in a blanket and slipped
in among the pillows of her window-seat, to watch the coming storm, and
she wished that she had Van there for company; he liked a thunder-storm
as well as she herself did.
Betsy looked out over the hills where she had so often watched the
wonderful changes of the sunsets. In the south there was a thin
crescent moon that showed its face by flashes between the scurrying
advance-clouds, with which the little winds were having a grand
pillow-fight. The moon rode serenely higher and higher and paid no
attention to the play that was going on.
But after a time the game grew fast and furious, and the moon went
quite out of sight, as bigger winds joined in with bigger and bigger
pillows--not downy white ones, but gray puffs, like rolls of smoke.
Low in the northwest a sullen mass of black lifted itself slowly, and
one could see the head of old Father Wind rising out of his blankets.
Taller and taller he grew, his long hair sweeping away in coils and
spirals, that whipped uncannily off his head only to let other locks
grow in their places. A giant he grew, with a bag on his back, and his
blankets rolling up around him, dark and awful. He would give those
Little Winds, who had waked him up, something to blow about.
Up and up he rose, leaving behind him a weird yellow counterpane
stretched out along the line of hills. Lightnings flashed from his
eyes, and his voice boomed like great guns.
The Little Winds and the Bigger Winds gave up their game, and scuttled
off before the growing fury, as old Father Wind pulled handfuls of
_real_ wind out of his bag and threw them about. Soon his blankets,
gray and ragged, unfolded and rushed up the sky, and the Little Winds
disappeared altogether.
Then Father Wind had it all his own way, and he worked himself
into a towering rage. Snake-like flashes of flame dripped from his
finger-tips, darting back and forth till the whole sky was lighted up
like a great furnace. Up rolled the blankets, one after the other,
until one could see only a whirling, tumbling mass. On, on! The far
hill-line was blotted out, and the sleeping town was drowned in a
boiling, seething chaos of cloud, wind, and falling water.
Up the hill rushed Father Wind, now a vast, formless destroyer. He
reached out his long arms, blew a great breath, and the first blast
struck the hilltop where stood the solid buildings of the Hospital.
Rip-boom-bang! The house shook to its very foundations. Could it stand
that awful onslaught? Betsy saw a great tree on the lawn snap like a
twig, and with some fibers still clinging to the trunk, stretch its
arms helplessly along the path of the wind. Leaves by thousands twisted
off and flew like fear-driven goblins. A board from no-one-knew-where
came up the hillside and struck the honeysuckle porch, tearing the
vines till they floated out like green ribbons.
Every one in the house was awake now, rushing around to see if the
doors and windows were safe.
Mrs. Johns came into Betsy’s room.
“Are you all right, dearie?”
“Yes, Aunt Kate; did you bring Vanny-Boy in?”
“No, dear, we did not waken in time.”
“Oh, Aunt Kate! He’s out there now?”
“We dare not open the door, Betsy. This is a terrible storm. I do not
know what would happen if the wind should find an entrance.”
“We must get him--he will be killed!”
“We cannot, dear. It is not possible. He may not get hurt at all; and
then any one might be killed who tried to go after him when things are
flying as they are now. We must wait for a lull in the storm.”
Betsy said no more, but waited till Mrs. Johns went on further errands.
Then, clinging to the walls and balusters, she stole down the stairs,
and looked through the window that opened on the honeysuckle porch. It
was a scene of battle; the matting screen, torn in shreds, appeared
glued to the ceiling; as she looked, the last rocking-chair went
careening away into the yard, where the wreckage of the other furniture
already lay. Pillows and blankets were clinging to tree-trunks or
plastered to sodden flower-beds, and poor Van was standing on the
mattress, watching with big, frightened eyes as things went by.
Rip! went a shutter over his head, and trembling he crept up on the
sill whose angle offered a bit of shelter.
Just in time! The next gust took the mattress with it, leaving only the
bare iron bones of the cot, to which Van’s chain was fastened.
“If the wind should blow him off, his little neck would be broken. I
_must_ do something,” thought Betsy.
Now the rain came down in blinding sheets. Betsy could stand it no
longer.
“Vanny-Boy, I’m going to get you, no matter what happens.” It was easy
enough to open the door, the waiting wind was only too eager. It took
but an instant, but in that instant Betsy was soaked to the skin.
Without heeding that, nor the roaring of the wind as it burst into the
hallway, she stepped out into the awful tumult, slipped the catch of
Van’s chain, picked up the half-drowned, frightened little body, and
set him inside the door.
Then came the really hard part--to shut the door again. Betsy pushed
with all her might. A strong man could hardly have done it, and she was
just recovering from an illness. In the hallway pictures were torn from
their moorings, and the furniture was dancing a quickstep. Try as best
she might, with all her strength, she could not close the latch.
“I’ve got to do it,” she sobbed, “I’ve just _got_ to, that’s all there
is to it!”
When a thing _must_ be done, somehow one seems to have a little more
than human power. Betsy gave one more desperate push, and click! went
the latch. She and Vanny-Boy were safe!
Now she turned to climb the stair, but instead she gave a weak little
laugh, her legs crumpled under her like paper, and she went down in a
wavering heap on the floor, with puddles of water running from her in
every direction. Van stood over her, whining.
“Go call them, Van! _Get your rope!_”
He knew what that meant; oh, yes! Up the stairs he leaped, barking, as
if rope was what all this fuss was about, anyhow.
“Why, there’s Van! How did he get in?” said Dr. Johns. A suspicion came
to him, and he hurried down the stairs, where he found Betsy, dripping
and helpless, but laughing.
“My dear, you should not have done this! Terrible things might have
happened.”
“I just _had_ to do it, Uncle Ben. He’d prob’ly have been killed if I
hadn’t.”
“And you might have been killed, you gallant little rescuer.”
“Well, it’s done now, and I’m glad I did it,” said Betsy, as she was
carried upstairs, put in dry clothing and sent back to bed.
In the morning the adventurers turned out to be none the worse for
their soaking. But oh, the wreck of the honeysuckle porch, and the
flower-beds, and the noble trees whose heads had been lopped off!
Nature had to work hard, with considerable help from the florist and
the carpenter, to get things back into shapeliness. The honeysuckle
porch had its broken vines trimmed off, the soaked pillows were dried
out, and the place generally was restored to order. But Van slept there
no more. His Betsy was better, and the freedom of the house was his
again. September came, and with it the glad freedom of out-of-doors,
and his old careless happy life.
[Illustration: “And now the long days of romping with Van were over.”]
CHAPTER IX
MORE LESSONS
“Betsy,” said Mrs. Johns, “school begins next Monday. Would you like to
go?”
“Oh, my, yes, Aunt Kate. May I?”
“Certainly. I haven’t bothered you much this summer about your studies,
for there were so many other important things to learn. But I think you
had better begin now.”
“Do you think I have enough manners, Aunt Kate?”
“Why, dearie, you’ve done wonders in these three months, and I’m going
to send you to Pelham Towers as a day pupil. You’ll meet little girls
there with good manners and it will help you. How are you in your
studies? Do you like books?”
“I just love ’em, Aunt Kate, and I took two prizes last winter term.
Then Pa wouldn’t let me go any more. He said if I could take prizes I
knew enough. I felt awful, at first. But I guess Ma did need me. She
was took--taken--sick pretty soon, and she never did get well any more.”
“Betsy dear, I’m sure it was best for you to help your mother, and what
you did will help make you the fine woman you are going to be some day.
But there’s nothing now to hinder you from learning as fast as you
like.”
So Betsy began, and after the first day she came home looking very
thoughtful.
“Well, how does school seem to you? What’s on your mind, Betsy?”
“It’s all right, I guess,” she said slowly. “But--Aunt Kate, it’s
like it is at Sunday School. My clothes are as nice and nicer than
most, but--I heard one girl tell another one--they thought I wasn’t
hearin’--that I was ‘country’.”
“Never mind them, Betsy. How about your lessons?”
“Well, Auntie, I was all kinds. Grammar,--” Betsy smiled up sidewise at
her Aunt,--“grammar,--I’m not much; geography,--I’m in the top class;
’rithmetic,--I’m top in that, too; reading,--Miss Pelham says I have a
good voice, but I need a lot of trainin’; and nature study,--Aunt Kate,
I don’t know the names of things, but I know more about bugs and worms
and garden sass and wild flowers than the whole school. And oh, Aunt
Kate, I’m going to learn the name of everything there is on earth.”
“Good girl! That’s the right road to travel.”
“And, Auntie Kate,” Betsy’s eyes were on the floor now, “I’m going to
watch those girls, and the first thing you know I won’t be queer any
more. I’ll be a real lady.”
“You’ve the makings of one in you, Betsy girl. Don’t be in a hurry,
everything will come out finely. I’ll trust you.”
“Some of those girls have got too many manners. They’re silly.”
“Follow after the simpler-mannered ones; putting on airs is not good
manners. How is your book coming on? I have never seen what you have
written. Don’t you think I am entitled to just a glimpse?”
Without a word Betsy got the book and handed it to Mrs. Johns, who
opened it with a keen appreciation of the sacredness of it, and of the
little girl’s simple trust in her.
From beginning to end it was a record of struggle and victory. Aunt
Kate did not smile, although many of the items were quaint, to say the
least. The first one was:
“Bathe yurself good. Do not skip neck and ears.”
Following came such as these:
“Bread is not buttered all to once. You break off little chunks.”
“A mouthful is not what you can stuf in. It is very little.”
“Do not bite your nales.”
“Hold your spoon and fork in your fingers like they was hot and burnin’
you.”
“Do not skuf your feet.”
“Do not drink out loud. Van makes a noise but he is a dog and
diffrent. Eat as still as you know how.”
“Knives is to cut with and nothin’ else.”
“Do not dip your supe tords you. It may go in your lap.”
“Drink supe from the side of spoon. (This is orkard, but Aunt Kate says
it is currect.) Do not soke cracker in supe.”
“A lie is the worst thing on earth. I will never be a liar.”
“Never bite your nales.”
“I will kepe my sole clene, just like the rest of me.”
“Teeth will not spoil on you if you brush ’em every time you eat.”
“Hare is a woman’s glory if it is comed. If not it is a site.”
“Aint and haint is not nice. Same with yep and nope.”
“Slang and swear words is not nice.”
“Never never never bite your nales. Ladies hands is always clene.”
There were many others, all showing that the child was struggling hard
to reach her physical and moral ideals.
“Betsy mine, I’m astonished at the amount of things you have learned;
and the best of it is that you are using your knowledge. Why, I’m proud
of you.”
And now the long days of romping with Van were over. Betsy took her
lunch, and did not reach home until half-past three. Always the little
Prince was on the lookout for her return. He knew when the very minute
came for her to turn in at the park gates, and would bark frantically
until he was let out. Then a wild rush, and before she was past the
lodge-gate, he would be leaping upon her. A frolic and a ramble would
follow, and after that Betsy must study a little before dinner.
With the flying days one had only to look at Betsy to see her grow.
She held her own at school, for her independent way of holding herself
aloof kept her from exposing her speech and actions to criticism.
Gradually she assimilated the gentle breeding of the better class
of girls in the school. There was a fine instinct in her that kept
her ideals in the right path. In her classes, although at first her
expressions were not always couched in elegance, her understanding of
things was clear. She loved her books to their very bindings. To get
at them she would almost neglect her play with Van. Her standing in
her classes gradually caused the girls to respect her, but although
her little heart craved a closer intimacy with some of them, she could
not bring herself to break the bond of reserve which her loveless
childhood had woven about her. So, while her comrades came to her for
help in their lessons, they went off with their arms twined about each
other, leaving her wondering. With Aunt Kate she would talk eagerly and
intelligently, but at the touch of a caressing arm, there would come in
Betsy’s eyes that startled glance of the wild thing,--the instinctive
drawing back; and then a pounding of the heart that did not yet dare to
own its hidden wells of affection.
With Van, however, she felt this reserve drop away entirely. The little
fellow gave his affection so freely, and demanded hers so insistently,
that refusal would have been impossible. He expected love, and it was
his. Aunt Kate watched this with a growing yearning in her motherly
heart, and caught glimpses now and then of the wonderful blossom that
might some day unfold from the stubborn little calyx.
The winter days grew short, then longer; Van waxed in greatness and
importance on the Hill-Top, and then, one Saturday morning he had an
experience that opened up new vistas. He, too, began his Grammar School.
Dr. Peters came over, looking as if he had something on his
mind--something special.
“Miss Betsy,” he said, “Dr. Johns thinks Van is old enough to try on
Ward M. There are some rats in the yard there that we cannot get rid
of.”
Betsy gave her consent rather reluctantly. Catching mice off one’s
own vine and fig tree is one thing, but being loaned out as a common
rat-catcher is another, and a bit beneath the dignity of a Prince of
the Blood.
Van himself had no such scruples. He went joyfully, with a feeling that
something unusual was about to happen, and whatever it might be, he
would be the boy for it.
The yard on Ward M. was surrounded on three sides by buildings,
underneath which the rats had burrowed and made fortresses for
themselves. No one could get at them without tearing down the
foundations of the Hospital. This was the yard where certain patients
took their airing, and the rats had become a pest and a nuisance.
Dr. Peters had a great scheme all planned out, by means of which he
hoped to make a clean sweep of the enemy. There were to be three
principal actors--Van, the Fire-Hose and Himself. The other doctors,
six of them, came out and stood around and got in the way, in the hope
that they might help a little, and at all events, see the fun. They
were like a lot of overgrown boys. Van felt that he was in first-rate
company, and pranced around proudly, feeling from the glances they cast
upon him, and the words with which they cheered him on, that, whatever
was about to happen, he was looked upon as the star performer.
The curtain went up when Dr. Peters fastened the fire-hose to the
hydrant, and the fire-hose opened the melodrama with a great swish and
swirl. As the water filled it, it flapped and writhed across the yard
like a great boa-constrictor.
“Look out there! The water’s coming pretty strong!”
The fat young doctor spoke too late. Dr. Peters missed his cue,
and the nozzle was jerked out of his hand by the rushing stream of
water. The hose capered around the enclosure, and tied itself up into
bow-knots, as if it were the historical sea-serpent in captivity. It
pointed its nozzle straight at a black-bearded young doctor, doubled
him up, put a crease in him, and left him gasping and soaked. Then it
turned its attention to Dr. Peters, who was jumping like a chestnut
on a hot shovel, trying to get another grip without being washed off
the face of the earth. All the other doctors scrambled off into safe
corners, and shouted directions to everybody, which nobody heard. Van
barked and tried to seize the wriggling hose, but only succeeded in
adding to the general tumult. At last the fat young doctor turned off
the water at the hydrant, Dr. Peters mopped his brow, the black-bearded
young doctor wrung the water out of his coat-tails, and the show went
on into the second act.
Gripping the nozzle-end of the hose firmly in both hands, Dr. Peters
aimed it at a rat-hole under the steps.
“Now, Van, stand ready. Easy now! Let her go at the hydrant,--not too
fast on the start.”
The fire-hose came alive again. Dr. Peters kept the nozzle turned
off until things were quite ready; Van stood by, all a-tremble with
eagerness,--and then----
Sh-sh-h-h-h-h! Squirt went a stream of water strong enough to knock
terror into the heart of the stoutest rat on earth. Straight into the
hole this time, and no bungling.
A squealing sound, and out came flying a drenched and much-befuddled
rat.
No chance for him to make an exit. Snap! The star performer had him by
the back of the neck. One little shake, a crunch, and all was over.
Another followed out of the same hole,--reluctantly. It was only a
question of choice for him,--death by drowning, or raticide. The hose
was too much for him; he chose the latter, and went the way of his
brother.
Nothing more out of that hole. Dr. Peters tried another. Squirt went
the icy stream, and out trailed a mother-rat and her nine half-grown
children.
Lively work for Van now. They scuttled in every direction, all over the
yard. Like a true sportsman, Van tackled the mother first, with a good
back-neck clutch, and she was done for. Now for the rest!
Hither, thither, from Dan to Beersheba he darted. No time now to make
a clean finish; every rat must be disabled before it could get away to
cover. And not one escaped. No historical Herod was ever in the running
with Van. His agility was marvelous. It was dart, shake, drop; dart,
shake, drop;--nine times, and all over the place.
Then he went the rounds again, and in a trice the whole ten were ready
to add to the heap of slain.
Another hole. Two came out, and one doubled and fled into the next hole
before Van could get him. All round the yard went the fire-hose, led by
Dr. Peters, sending its messenger into every hole, and seldom failing
to bring out one or more victims.
It was a sweeping massacre, nothing more nor less; the rats had no
chance against that terrible trio,--a doctor, a fire-hose, and a
fox-terrier. Twenty-six rodents were gathered to their fathers.
Dr. Peters and the fire-hose remained unchanged, but Van went home
a reconstructed dog, never more to be merely a cuddled, pampered
house-darling. Betsy shuddered when she looked at him. He had a wild
eye, a swagger, blood on his white shirt-front and all over his coat.
He was a man-grown now, and had done a man’s work. His only regret was
that the lady of his heart could not see the magnificent heap of slain.
But perhaps she would not have appreciated it. He looked pityingly at
Betsy. She was only a girl. She could not go out into the world and
kill rats. Poor Betsy!
[Illustration: “Ha! Ha! I’m sure the cat must have laughed.”]
CHAPTER X
VAN’S WILD OATS
While Betsy was busy at school, the education of Van did not come to a
standstill. But, alas! his new lessons were not in the path of virtue.
The little Prince roamed the white world over, all through the short
winter days, as far as his legs would take him afield. He made many
friends, with a royal disregard for social standing, as other princes
have been known to do, and before spring came he had fallen into the
hands of,--yes, of thieves,--for they stole from him his good name and
his character.
In the big Hospital there were many attendants, who, having hours off
duty, liked nothing better than to amuse themselves with young Van,
whose beauty and bright, active ways had made him the darling of the
whole Hill-Top. Now, besides those attendants, there were, around the
building, many, many cats--cats of all descriptions; pet cats a few,
and roving, wild cats a-many. There were whole families of cats that
had come up as the flowers of the field, who toiled and spun not, and
who held themselves accountable to no one, man or woman. They were a
sad, bad lot, that stole and laid waste the cupboards of the Hospital.
Nobody loved them and they loved nobody. They had no manners or morals,
and were simply a band of robbers.
Now, on an evil day, some of the young men decided that it would be a
good and useful thing to train Van as a slayer of cats as well as a
catcher of rats. Spring was coming on, and a new lot of kittens had
appeared on the scene, when, out behind the buildings, where Dr. Johns
could not see them, a number of attendants smuggled Van, one day, and
turned him loose where the cats were thickest.
They cheered him on and encouraged him in every way possible, and
he, being by birthright a sporting gentleman, and the natural enemy
of all small animals, required very little training to make him an
expert “catter.” He needed no coaxing. He still remembered that old
yellow Tommy that he had treed in his infancy. Betsy and Mrs. Johns had
laughed at that. It would certainly be a delight to them if they could
see him wipe a whole family of good-for-nothing kittens off the map.
There was not even the memory of a reproof to restrain him.
Those were wild, wicked days that followed, and those lawless
attendants applauded his misdeeds. First the kittens disappeared, then
the middle-sized cats followed, though these were a swifter lot, and he
had to stalk and catch them unawares. Then, for he was a man-grown now,
he tried the big old cats. If he could get them by the backs of their
necks it was all over with them; but they grew wary, and the biggest
ones would fight back, with claws and teeth, leaving many a scar of
battle on his brown head, that caused Betsy to wonder.
Still, it was rare sport to chase these veterans, and Van’s days abroad
were one long series of crimes. Home he would go at night, and sleep
the sleep of an angel in his basket in the kitchen. In the morning he
would be off to kill, kill, kill.
He did not stop at the Hill-Top. There were neighbors who had cats.
These he found, and many a happy family was made desolate. Soon,
instead of being a well-behaved little dog, beloved by all, he became
a hated ruffian. Many a time it was only the name on his collar that
saved him from being shot. For he wore a collar now, with a brass
plate, which announced to those who could read as they ran, that he was
owned by Dr. Johns, of the big Hospital.
It was a long time before the family knew of his sins, and when it
finally came out it nearly broke the heart of Betsy, and made Dr.
Johns look very grave indeed, and wonder if he had not done right in
objecting to his coming.
It was a warm April day, nearly a year since Van had come to the
Hill-Top to live. He was taking his peaceful daily walk, with Betsy
for company, and they wandered down into the flower garden, where
the pansies were beginning to bloom in the cold-frames. Three pretty
kittens were frisking on the gravel walk, and Betsy stopped to play
with them.
Piff! Right under her nose Van caught one, and had shaken the life out
of it before she knew what had happened. He laid it proudly at the feet
of her whose approval he desired.
“Van! Van! What are you doing? You bad dog!”
Betsy’s voice had never sounded like that before. To his surprise she
caught him by the collar, and before he could get at kitten number two,
she had given him a sound whipping.
This was most unexpected. He had thought to see her in ecstasies of
delight, as she was when he had killed that first mouse. Now, how was
this? One person had taught him something, and another was punishing
him for it. Van was quite bewildered. Tail down, he went home with his
mistress, ashamed and heart-broken over the first severe punishment he
had received at her hands.
However, it remained like this--he was grown up, and no longer a
baby and a coddled house-pet; he was not to be ruled by any one in
petticoats. Betsy might know rules for house manners, but what could
she know of the outside world! He would abide by the teachings of men,
as behooved the son of royalty. Betsy’s little whippings were not much,
anyway!
So, although he went home in a very subdued way, with his head drooping
and his bark silent, he was in no way minded to continue in obedience.
The bad way was so much more to his liking, too. Do not men, and good
men, go out with guns, and shoot and kill innocent birds and squirrels,
for the mere sport of it? It is a gentleman’s sport--to kill. Pity
that it should be so! So we cannot too severely blame a little dog for
following the instincts that grown men indulge in and are never whipped
for.
Everything seemed to be against Vanny-Boy’s being a good dog. Mary
the cook, and Treesa, could not be bribed into punishing the winsome,
fascinating sinner. There was no one to do it but Betsy, and she hated
to worse than anybody. But she loved the little Prince too well to let
him go on lightly in his wicked ways.
One evening, when it was just beginning to be cat-time--every one
knows that this is at twilight, when the cats, who love darkness,
shake themselves out of their day naps, and prowl about after mice and
rats--Van escaped through the kitchen door, and was off on a marauding
expedition.
It was a lovely night, with a rising moon, and a soft, still air that
carried scents and sounds wonderfully; a night simply perfect for cats,
ay, and for dogs, too, thought Vanny-Boy, as he scampered over the wide
lawn toward the Hospital buildings. The birds in the nests were giving
their last sleepy chirps and tucking their heads under their wings.
Soon everything was still, save for a chorus of frogs that chirped and
boomed the whole night through in the distant ponds.
Van sniffed the air.--Rat! He took the trail, but it ended at a barred
cellar window.
Sniff! Sniff! Surely that was Cat! Van doubled back, and followed
Kitty’s scent,--through the big gate, across the road and through the
fence into the clover meadow beyond. Here it was very still. Overhead
the policemen fireflies were lighting home the laggard bees from their
day’s toil, and lending their lantern rays to the operatic performances
of a cloud of young mosquitoes.
Under the daisies and clover-heads stole the black cat. There were
rustlings and scurryings among the field mice, I can tell you. A meadow
lark flew off and left her four white eggs until the enemy had safely
passed. But, oh, Pussy, even as you were hunting _your_ prey, there was
one following of whom it were best to be always wary!
Sh! Sh! There went a little field-mouse right under Pussy’s nose. She
jumped, she had him--almost! Just then a brown and white streak whizzed
through the grasses, gave one leap over the clover-tops, and--no--he,
too, missed. She was too quick for him; but, without intending to,
he had saved the life of the field-mouse, who scuttled off in one
direction as fast as Pussy in another.
There followed a sharp race. Pussy was big and strong, and had she had
time to turn and show her claws, she might have fended for herself. But
Van was almost upon her--there was nothing for it but flight. Through
the clover, first the black, then the white flew past; under the fence,
across the road, through the gate, over the Hospital lawn, back to
where they had started. There, right ahead, stood a friendly maple
tree; one spring--and Pussy was safe! Vanny-Boy stood barking at the
foot, as he had barked at the yellow cat a year ago.
Pussy stopped on the first limb, turned around, breathed a few times,
to see if she still could, and looked down at Van, a thing to be
scorned and flouted. He could not climb trees--not he! Ha, ha! I am
sure the cat must have laughed, just like that.
That surely was a disappointment to Van. He leaped vainly against the
tree-trunk; he ran around it in circles; he barked and barked.
Dr. Johns in the house looked up at Mrs. Johns, who was reading aloud.
“Surely that is Van barking so loudly. I fear he will disturb the
patients.”
“That’s his bark, sure,” said Betsy, dropping her work. “I’ll go out
and fetch him.”
Now Betsy said that as if she were going out to bring in an ordinary,
obedient little dog. It was easy to say.
She took down the whistle that she used to call him. It sounded clear
and shrill across the lawn. There was no result. Van’s loud and
insistent barking did not change its tone one whit.
“Here, Van! Here, Van! Come here, Vanny-Boy!”
More barking, and a little louder and fiercer.
“Van!”--this was very stern--“Come here, I say!”
More barking; then a sound of sniffling and rustling, as if Pussy had
gone down one tree and scuttled up another.
Betsy sighed, put up the whistle and took down the whip, and started
in the direction of the tumult. Under the tree she stopped and waved
the whip, with menace in her eye, which it was too dark for Van to see,
even if he had been looking at her.
Van flitted to the far side of the tree, and barked as vigorously as if
she were not there. Betsy started around after him; Van took the other
half of the circle; Betsy cut across to close in on him; Van leaped to
one side, dodged the whip-lash, and darted to the base of the tree, as
if he would _make_ that cat come down before the fun was spoiled.
In vain. Pussy understood that Betsy was on her side, and stood her
ground, or, rather, she stayed _climbed_, looking down in silent
amusement on the interesting spectacle below.
Round and round the tree went Van, with Betsy after him, the whip
almost swinging to him, he always just ahead, or doubling so quickly
that she could not catch him.
“Wow, wow, wow!”
“Come here, I say!”
“Wow, wow, wow!”
Van was having the last word every time, for Betsy was almost
breathless. The poor patients must have had a hard time of it trying to
sleep that evening.
“I will not give up my cat!” barked Van.
“Come here this instant!” called Betsy.
“Not if I know it! you can’t catch me!” barked Van.
“I’ll get you yet, you young rascal!” panted Betsy.
“My! but this is the best fun ever!”
“Just you wait till I get you. Then we’ll see!”
“I can tire her out and get the cat, too,” thought Van, as he gave vent
to a perfect chorus of mad barks.
“I’ll get him if it takes all night,” said Betsy, gritting her teeth.
She could no longer run, so she sat with her back against the tree,
prepared to spend the night there if necessary.
Not so wise was Van. He continued barking and circling and tearing the
night into shivers, while his adversary rested and got her second wind.
Now Betsy was up and at him again. Van was tiring a bit; he looked
around for help. He gave up hope of getting the cat.
Not far away on the grass by the kitchen door sat Mary, enjoying the
sweet air, and, I suspect, enjoying also the row that was going on
under the maple tree. Mary was his friend; Mary would protect him. To
her he flew.
But Betsy’s ideas were different. She knew that something must be done
and done quickly, or her little Prince would become a nuisance and a
disgrace to his royal name. She had tired him out in his excitement,
and now the whip did its work, while Van stood silently, taking his
punishment like a man and a gentleman. Silently he crawled into his
basket until the smarting was over, and his little heart beat less
violently and he could think. He had sinned in haste; now there was
leisure for repentance. His dear mistress had been angry with him,
and with good cause. He had certainly given her a chase, and a wild
one, and he deserved his punishment. Moreover, she had not come to say
good-night to him as usual. Queer!
The door of Betsy’s room opened a crack; a little dog with sad eyes
looked up into her face as she sat on her couch, braiding her hair; an
appealing nose was laid on her knee.
“Van, are you sorry?”
That was not the voice of an angry mistress, only a grieved one. There
was hope. He burrowed his muzzle in her hand as she stretched it toward
him; he whined a little note of love and pleading, as a smile broke
across her face; he jumped upon the couch and looked straight into her
eyes, coaxing for the forgiveness that was now so near at hand. With
apologetic little grunts he worked the muscles of his face, as if he
were trying to speak in her own language, and tell her that he would
try very hard to be good. Only, she must forgive him when the heart of
the hunter in him beat too high for reasoning.
“A little patience, oh, Betsy, my mistress. I will try; oh, I will try
to be a good dog.”
But it was hard to remember when the voices of his ancestors called
to him. Once when the wayward little Prince had been more than
usually exasperating, Dr. Johns undertook to chastise him. Solemnly
and deliberately he went through with the disagreeable duty, Van,
as always, crouching quietly and without a sound. He took it like a
soldier. A cur might howl for mercy, might even lick the hand that
hurt him, but not a prince of the blood. When the whipping was over he
walked silently away, climbed into his basket, curled up, and began
to lick the places that stung. There he thought it over, and later he
bobbed up as serenely as if he had quite forgotten or forgiven the
injury done him.
If Betsy thought that her uncle was going to help her in the matter of
Van’s training, she was to be disappointed. The very next day, as she
stood in the door of the honeysuckle porch, waiting for Dr. Johns to
come home for lunch, she saw him on the walk, with Van capering about
him.
What did that gray-haired back-slider do but sit down on the step,
take Van’s bonny brown head in his two hands, look straight into his
fearless eyes, and say,
“Vanny-Boy, I’ll never, never whip you again as long as I live, no
matter how bad you are. I’d be ashamed to do it. I’m a great big man,
and you are so little and so pretty!”
Betsy stole softly away that Dr. Johns might not know that she had
overheard these promptings of his gentle heart. But she knew now that
she had not one soul to help her; for Mrs. Johns had long ago washed
her hands of any part in Van’s up-bringing, and spoiled him like the
others. She also knew that if she ever succeeded in making Van as
good as he was brave and fearless, she would have to win the fight
single-handed. She said to herself, sadly,
“Aunt Kate has to teach me manners, because I belong to her now, and
I’ve got to teach Van, because he belongs to me. I’m going to do my
duty.”
[Illustration: “Always to hold his ground and never to lose his nerve.”]
CHAPTER XI
VAN BECOMES A HERO
Van by this time knew the Hill-Top from end to end, and for miles and
miles on all sides. His four feet and his delicate nose had explored
the whole countryside. He hunted with Thatcher, he rode with the
expressman, he prowled whole mornings by himself. But, best of all, he
loved to chase after Betsy. As the days grew longer, the little maid
studied her lessons in the afternoon, and took her walk with Van after
dinner. She said to Mary one evening, as she routed Van out of his
basket in the kitchen,
“Where’s the whip, Mary? I must take it so Van won’t chase cats.”
“Ah, now, Miss Betsy, he won’t be afther hurtin’ the cats. He just do
be havin’ his little fun wit’ ’em.” Mary had no such tender feelings
where cats were concerned, and the Boy-Heart, as she called him, should
be allowed to follow his pretty little instincts.
“Fox terriers is intinded to chase cats, Miss Betsy, and whin he goes
out wit’ me I lets him have his pleasure. He do enj’y himsilf, to be
sure!” Mary would not have betrayed him if he had killed half a dozen
cats, and she rather unwillingly handed the whip to Betsy, who started
off with Van.
They skirted the lawn down by the row of maples, racing through the
soft grass, while Van barked at the long shadows, looking himself like
a thing of light in the level golden rays of the sinking sun. By the
flower garden they turned up, between the two goldfish ponds. Van cared
nothing for the ponds--water was only a thing to be avoided, anyway.
The biggest one was the very pond into which Thatcher had thrown him
when he was a baby. Betsy might stop, if she chose, to watch the
darting fish, but Van hurried through a tall hedge beyond. Here there
might be some hunting.
But all was still. They crossed back to the walk, and swung around the
South Building and into Bow Lane. There was a collie dog in the Lane;
he was a friendly old fellow, and Van stopped to pass the time of day
with him.
Down Bow Lane they went for a bit, and then turned into the grounds
again, this time behind the buildings. An English setter lived there,
but he was on a chain and did not count.
Now they came to a row of small buildings, and here, in the days of his
apprenticeship at the business, there had been a perfect harvest of
cats; cats to be chased through fences, cats to be treed, cats to be
caught by their fearful mistresses and hurried away to safety, at the
sound of Van’s bark. But now there were left only a few veterans that
backed up against walls and stood at bay, with two rows of sharp teeth
and twenty claws to bury in him, if he ventured too near. Van respected
these old, seasoned cats. Summer and winter they held their own and
defied him, and knowing that Betsy held the whip, he was easily gotten
past Cat Row.
Betsy heaved a sigh of relief, however, when the occasional spitting
and sputtering, barking and growling, was over, with no really violent
encounter, and they turned down past the carpenter shops, and came upon
Pig-Pen Alley. Here was the grand game of all the games.
The pigs, in general, took no notice of Van, but in and out of the pens
darted rats. At sight of Van they hurtled to cover in every direction.
They knew the enemy!
But to-night there was no sport, for Betsy did not encourage him;
instead she hurried him past these possible scenes of bloodshed.
Beyond Pig-Pen Alley they came upon Silver Street. Here lived two more
collies, who barked at Van and Betsy from behind a high hedge. On from
here they went up the grassy road, turned in at the gate, rounded a
clump of spruces, and were in sight of Dr. Johns’ home.
Right here Van, with a sense of having been cheated out of the best
part of the walk by Betsy’s womanish dislike for battle, decided for
himself that the evening’s entertainment was not over--not his part of
it, anyway. He turned suddenly, and went straight back by the way he
had come.
When Betsy went up the steps of the honeysuckle porch, there was no Van
at her heels. She called, but he was nowhere to be seen, and he made no
answer.
Betsy whistled and called to him in vain. She went into the house
greatly troubled.
“I don’t know what came over him, Aunt Kate. He seemed to forget
something and go back for it.”
“We won’t wait for him, Betsy. He’ll come back before long, as gay as a
lark.”
Meantime Van was alone and free to follow his own sweet will. Down
Silver Street he went, stopping to bark defiance at the two collies.
Then he turned to the left, and went towards Toby Hollow. Many times
had he been there in the daylight, but never before at night. It was
a delicious place, full of whispering mysteries of leaf and insect.
Little night noises and voices of the underworld babbled around him,
the trees bent above him, like friendly giants, and the Dark was soft
and warm. There were depths to explore that never existed in the
daytime. Here a squirrel swished past almost within reach of Van’s
nose; now a woodchuck crossed his path, and he tracked it to its hole
and waited there, long and vainly, for its reappearance. He would
remember that woodchuck, sometime, when Thatcher was there to help him.
The night had long ago pulled down its velvety curtains. Far away a
little rooster, who was just learning to crow, and was anxious to
get in extra practice, turned up his cracked little voice: “Ruckety,
ruckety r-r-r-r-r-r!” It made a stir through all the chicken yards
along the road; Van barked a reply. If that meant morning he must hurry
on with his night-prowling. Dew-wet but happy he turned back. The game
in Toby Hollow was too shy. He would go where he knew his ground better.
Pig-Pen Alley again. Betsy was not here to bother him now. He would
make a round by himself. Piff! there went a rat right across the alley
in front of him. Like a shot from a cannon went Van through the palings
and was hot on its track. Down the alley they skimmed along. If the rat
could only hold out to that corner it would be safe. It jumped for a
hole, but Van headed it off, and it turned into the darkness of the
great Cow Barn. There was no chance to turn or double--Van was too near.
All was quiet there, for it was late in the night, and good cows sleep
when it is dark. Mr. Rat scuttled along--the breath of the dog was on
him;--oh, for a place to hide!
At the far end, beyond the long rows of gently breathing cattle, was
an enclosed stall, built of cement, and strewn with clean straw. Just
now it was occupied by a mother cow and her baby calf, only a day old.
A sack of corn leaned against the stall, and with a leap the rat was
behind it. Van tipped the bag over, but at that instant the rat had
found a knot-hole in the wooden door, and was on the inside. Van could
not go through a knot-hole.
But there were other ways, and he did not intend to give up the
chase--not yet! The stall was only four feet high, and there was the
sack of corn. On this Van scrambled. With a leap he caught the edge
of the stall with his paws; a spring and a wriggle, and he, too, was
inside.
He landed on something warm and soft; a something around which the rat
ran, escaping again by the hole where he had entered; a something
which gave an astonished “moo!” at the disturbance of her rest; a
something which rose out of the pitch darkness like a black mountain.
Mother Cow would see what was destroying the slumbers of her baby and
herself. Huge and awful she was, for a mother cow with her little one
is no child’s toy. Had it been daylight she could easily have made an
end of poor Van, with her wicked horns.
As it was she stood there, blinking and grumbling, with a threat in her
throat, and a warning also to the wabbly baby, that crowded in behind
her great bulk, where it would be safe from danger.
Mother Cow was quite enough for Van, however. She stood there, fearsome
and menacing, and Van faced her--the biggest problem he had ever
tackled. She looked formidable indeed; he certainly could not get her
by the back of the neck and shake her. He decided not to rush the lady,
but to fight shy, and for time. He must be brave, look her down, and
not flinch.
He made no sound. Somehow the valiant little figure, standing his
ground before her, made Brindle hesitate about attacking in her turn.
She shook her horns threateningly, but took no step toward him. Van
stood motionless. The minutes crept slowly by.
At the far end of the big cow-barn appeared the light of a swinging
lantern. The night-watchman was going his rounds to see that all was
safe. Van gave one long howl. Perhaps he would be rescued. The man
hesitated--yes, he was coming!--No, he had decided that some dog
outside had made the noise. All seemed peaceful in the cow-barn, and he
did not go in, but disappeared down toward Cat Row.
Van whined despairingly, but the man was now out of hearing. Another
hour must be lived through before help could come again.
There was not one thing in the stall on which Van could climb and make
his way to safety, and four feet were more than he could jump. The
walls, bare and smooth, closed him in. There was no light, save that
which struggled through a high, cobwebby window, from the far-away
stars.
No help anywhere! nothing to do but wait and wait till the
night-watchman came back; always to hold his ground, and never to lose
his nerve! He squared himself to the task.
The baby calf grew chilly and cried. Mother Cow backed closer to it,
almost stepping on it with her great awkward cloven hoofs. It pressed
into the corner, and its little body was warmed against hers. It
stopped shivering, lay down, and at last slept.
The minutes went on, and the quarter-hours. Van slipped backward
slowly, warily, until he could brace himself in the far corner of the
stall. Always he kept his eyes on the enemy, his head lowered to point,
his stump-tail straight and alert, his forelegs ready for a spring, his
hind legs wide and rigid,--ready for the on-rush that might come at any
minute. He grew stiff and cold.
The chimes in the clock tower of the Middle Building sounded,--then the
great bell struck One! The light appeared again in the doorway. Van
whined.
“What’s that?” called the night-watchman.
Van did not answer. So a-tremble was he with eagerness and nervous
excitement that he did not think to sound again his alarm-signal.
The night-watchman looked in, but the aisle between the rows of cattle
was empty, save for the over-turned bag of corn. He lifted his lantern
high, and looked into the stalls nearest him. All quiet everywhere.
“Now he is coming,” thought Van, and he stood silent and quivering,
never taking his eyes from the enormous foe who seemed to grow bigger
in the dim lantern-light. She faced him as before, and neither made a
sound. The watchman turned, and went out into the night.
Van shuddered, and the great mountainous mass lowed ominously, and
swayed from side to side. If he stirred a hair out of his place she
would be upon him with her horns.
Another slow hour must creep around. Van’s nerves were near the
breaking point, but he must hold on. If only he could have done
something, it would have been easier. But he could not rush a monster
like that. He had no weapons with which to fight dragons. More than
one knight in the fairy tales has been chewed up because he attempted
the impossible, or lost his guard for an instant. He must simply stand
there, with every nerve and muscle in hand. He must not move, and thus
bring on the unequal struggle, in which he would certainly be killed.
If the struggle came he would fight, and fight to his finish. Until
then he must simply stand at bay. Help might come even yet.
Courage and endurance! Courage and endurance! Could he last another
hour?
The chimes struck the half-hour--three-quarters--then the welcome
One--Two! Soon the door would grow light again. Yes, there he was--the
watchman!
A quavering cry that was almost a sob, broke from Van. “Oh, come to
me!” he seemed to say, “I cannot hold out much longer.”
The Mother Cow swayed and grumbled, once--twice. She, too, was tiring.
Why not rush him and have it over?
“Hello!” said the night-watchman. “What’s the trouble? That sounds like
something in distress.”
This time he came in and went down the long aisle. At the very end he
stopped and looked over into the box-stall. There stood the cow in one
corner, with her baby lying huddled behind her, her great mother-eyes,
fierce with fear, looking straight into the brave brown eyes of a wee
dog. Even then Van did not stir. He must hold that awful thing back by
the force of his will, until the last moment of danger was over.
The night-watchman reached over and lifted Van out by his collar. At
his touch the little hero crumpled up with a piteous whine that went
straight to the heart of his rescuer. Then he lay still in the man’s
arms.
The night-watchman looked him over and whistled. On his collar he read
“Vanart VI.” He did not stop to read more.
“It’s the Boss’s dog, sure. Well, of all the pluck! He must have been
here two or three hours. I’m sure I heard something at twelve and at
one, but I never dreamed it was inside the building. How he held out
against that cow I don’t see. All mothers are fierce when their young
is in danger. You certainly have got the grit, young fellow. I make my
bow to you.”
He picked up his lantern and was off at a swinging stride toward Dr.
Johns’ house. Van lay silent until his breath returned, his heart
beat steadier, and his nerves lost their terrible tension. Then his
self-respect came to him. He could not bear to be brought home in a
man’s arms. Betsy or Mary might tote him around a little, if he were
tired or sleepy,--but any one else,--oh, no, indeed!
With a wriggle and a plunge he slipped from the hold of the astonished
night-watchman, who stood with his mouth open, watching him disappear
through the dark, like a small goblin, in the direction of home.
The man looked after him, and laughed.
“The little tyke’s a sport all right, all right! I sh’d think I’d seen
a ghost if I hadn’t had hold of him.”
Betsy lay in her bed, listening for the clear bark that would sound
across the lawn sooner or later.
Instead, at the very door of the house she heard a pitiful wail, and
she bounded up to let in a trembling creature, a little Prince, with
all the princeliness gone out of him; he looked no better than the
meanest mongrel that ever lived.
Not until the next day, when the night-watchman told his story, did she
know that her Vanny-Boy was a real hero.
[Illustration: “He was as proud as a peacock.”]
CHAPTER XII
THE GREAT PARADE
School was over, and it was very near the Fourth of July. Betsy had
never seen a celebration, and neither had Van, for that matter, as
there had been no demonstrations at the Hospital the year before.
But this year there was to be a grand parade; it was to take place
on the grounds, for the entertainment of the patients. For weeks the
attendants at the Hospital had been spending their odd moments in
making costumes. There were to be floats of every kind filled with
revelers, and those who could not ride were to join the procession on
foot, decked out with the bravest. After the parade there would be
lemonade and peanuts for everybody, with fireworks in the evening.
Betsy was greatly excited. She had been asked to dress as one of a
party of haymakers, and ride in a big haywagon, all draped with red,
white, and blue. Her big brown eyes danced as she talked it over the
evening before, with Treesa and Mary.
“Why can’t the Boy-Heart ride wit’ you in the waggin?” said Mary. “He’d
make a foine show, sittin’ up so grand besoide yez.”
“He’d be great!” said Betsy, clapping her hands. “I’ll put his chain on
him, so he can’t get away. He’ll be the finest thing in the show. I’ll
ask Aunt Kate. Van, do you want to ride in the procession?”
Van knew well enough they were talking about him. He barked his
willingness to take part in anything that promised excitement and a
good time, and to play any part, from the Lion to Thisbe. Aunt Kate
looked a little dubious, but seeing the light in Betsy’s face, she
consented.
And that evening Treesa and Mary put their heads together. Early on the
morning of the great day they called to Van, and from Treesa’s room
came forth sounds of scuffling and much laughter, ending with a series
of barks. Then a little dog burst from the room and danced into the
front of the house, with his eyes sparkling, and his spirits so gay
that he needs must get his rope, and have Betsy shake it up with him
for a little.
Later he heard Treesa calling, “Here, Pansy, Pansy! Come here,
Pollywog--come here again.” (Van’s nicknames among his friends were
many and varied.)
He ran to her, capering recklessly, and this time there was less
scuffling, and more laughter and barking. When he reappeared, he
was the spirit of mystery itself. I doubt, had he been able to talk
English, if he could have kept the secret into which he had been taken.
It was just the kind of a day the weather-man should always pick out
for the Fourth of July. Sunny and breezy it was; not too hot, not too
cold. The preparations went merrily on, and at a quarter to ten Betsy
looked for Van, as the festivities were to begin at ten sharp.
But Van did not appear.
“I wonder where he is?” said Mrs. Johns. “I hope nothing has happened.”
“I’ll see if he is in the kitchen,” said Betsy, and just then the
swinging door opened, and in came Van--Vanart the Prince, prancing
proudly on his hind legs, dressed in the bluest of overalls with white
polka dots and shoulder straps; a snowy shirt, one of Treesa’s collars,
and a great red Windsor tie at his throat. His forepaws waved out of
tiny cuffs; these, with the other two that appeared to be treading on
air, his brown head and his stump of a tail sticking through a hole
made for it in his overalls, were all the evidence to prove that he was
still a dog.
He was as proud as a peacock, and as pleased with the effect of his
costume as if he had thought it all up himself and made the clothes.
There was no hint of the first struggle, when Treesa and Mary had tried
the clothes on; nor of the second, when they taught him how to wear
them and he had tolerated the garments for love of the makers. He wore
his suit like a man, and looked delightfully self-conscious.
The applause was loud and long, quite enough to satisfy even the vain
little Prince, who loved nothing better than being noticed. He felt
that already he had made the hit of the day.
“The overalls and the shirt will be simply perfect for the haywagon,”
laughed Mrs. Johns. “How did you ever think of it? The collar and
the red tie are the finishing touches. He’ll be the observed of all
observers.”
“And patriotic, too,” said Betsy. “Look at the colors--red, white and
blue! He’s just grand!”
Van was wriggling with the excitement of the affair. The final
adjustment of his red Windsor tie was the hardest to bear, it took so
long for Treesa and Betsy to set the bows right; still longer, because
they were laughing at Van’s comical pride in himself. When at last he
went capering over the lawn at the end of the chain which Betsy held
tightly, he was quite too much for the family, who were assembled on
the honeysuckle porch, shaking with laughter.
“It’s the foine b’y he is!” said Mary from her station on the kitchen
walk.
“He’ll be the whole show, or I miss my guess,” said Treesa.
“It’s the kapin’ of him in the waggin that I’m doubtin’. I hope she do
be havin’ a tight hould on the collar of him.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right. He’s so conceited and proud of his clothes
that he’ll keep straight.”
Behind the great buildings the procession was forming, with all sorts
of strange people running to and fro. Masked figures in petticoats
that were flaunted with distinct masculine awkwardness, pretty young
girl-attendants in red, white, and blue, and wearing liberty-caps,
children in gay costumes, Uncle Sams and clowns. There were wagons
filled with farm-hands, bicycles transformed into whirling rosettes
of color, floats bearing the “States,” from Texas to Rhode Island.
Every spare attendant and every vehicle on the place was pressed into
service. All the employees and their families were there,--even some of
the jolly young doctors took part in the motley show.
The procession started out on the mile-long driveway that surrounded
the Hospital buildings, and it was truly gorgeous. Betsy’s happy face
shone from the seat on the haymakers’ wagon, where she sat proudly with
the driver, holding Van beside her.
People from the town and country around, who had turned out to see the
parade, laughed at the perky little head with its red necktie, while
from many windows the patients shouted all sorts of greetings to his
small Magnificence.
“Hello, Van!”
“Ain’t he the dude!”
“Get onto them overalls!”
“Hi, there, Van; lend us your necktie!”
Van bobbed his head every time he heard his name, and enjoyed the
whole show as if it had been planned for him alone. He was in his
element--the very center of admiration. Betsy felt that she was doing
her whole duty by her part of the exhibit. All was going forward as
merrily as possible until----
Van looked ahead and saw something in the procession--a small object
that had up to now escaped his notice; as they rounded a curve he had
a second glimpse of it. One of the attendants, dressed as a clown, was
leading a very much bescrubbed and shining young pig. Van was now wide
awake.
Piggy was pink as the flush of dawn. He wore a large bow of red,
white, and blue ribbon which annoyed him exceedingly. Moreover, he was
naturally timid and retiring, and did not like being dragged around by
a string in the midst of such queer-looking people. He was distinctly
uncomfortable. Piggy protested, and it was his squealing that first
drew Van’s attention.
Now Van knew pigs--none better; but this was a new kind. He did not
stop to consider that he himself was groomed and arrayed and fit to
kill--that he was quite as funny as the funniest. His one desire was to
get a closer view of the strange, uncanny beast. He gave a leap; and
almost went over the dash-board, but Betsy was on her guard and held
him back. She took a firm grip on his leather collar, which he wore
under Treesa’s, and tried to steady him. He wriggled backward under her
arm, leaving the collar and chain in Betsy’s hands, while he slipped
down behind her, yelping and barking, into the midst of the merrymakers
in the hayrick.
Instantly there was uproar and confusion. One caught at his tail, but
it was too short to be useful; another grabbed him by his red necktie,
and it came away, an unsightly string. Another snatched at his white
collar; that also came loose. Some one took a firm hold upon his
shirt-front; he gave a mighty squirm, and behold, he was no longer in
that shirt! It dangled in the hands of the astonished haymaker. Leaping
and wriggling, Van, at top speed, made a pilgrim’s progress from hand
to hand, down the whole length of the hayrick.
Betsy was on the ground now; she ran around to the rear, and amid a
chorus of gleeful yells from the crowd, she caught her charge as he
jumped. The procession had stopped, so Van’s side-show had full swing.
He struggled desperately, and was out of Betsy’s arms, leaving the last
remnant of his respectability--his overalls--in her hands, and was
after that pig.
Piggy was quite unprepared. With nerves already wrought to a high
tension by the crowd, and the unaccustomed grandeur of his necktie,
the sight of Van bearing down upon him was too much. He squealed as
never pig squealed before, and tugged at his gala harness in frantic
terror. Van leaped upon him; he tore the offending ribbon bow from his
neck; he tried to catch him somewhere, and shake him up, but Piggy was
a pachyderm, plump and solid,--and that means that Van could not find
one spot on his whole pink exterior where a restraining tooth could be
fastened.
Piggy squealed louder; it was an awful moment. One more wild lunge, and
the leash flew out of the clown’s hands. With a bound Piggy was off
across the lawn, sprinting at a gait so lively that any razor-back of
the wildwood would have been proud to own him as a relative.
Van was hard at Piggy’s heels, in spite of the efforts of the
bystanders to catch him; the clown followed Van, Uncle Sam followed the
clown; a haymaker went streaking after Uncle Sam; a male attendant in
petticoats gathered up his skirts and followed the haymaker--it was far
more stirring than the ride of the Miller of Dee.
The whole of the United States stood up in their floats and shrieked
with joy, Rhode Island and California clasping hands, as the mad
procession went whirling by. Those who did not join in the chase stood
cheering and holding their sides and offering good advice.
“Ten to one on the pig!”
“I put my money on the clown!”
“I’m for Van, strong!”
“Hurry, hurry, Uncle Sam. You’re getting left!”
That was an unparalleled race, long to be remembered in the annals of
Fourth of July festivities; history hath not its like.
It ended abruptly.
[Illustration: VAN CAUGHT UP WITH PIGGY AT THE FAR END OF THE LAWN]
Van caught up with Piggy at the far end of the lawn, just as the
clown arrived and made a dive for Piggy’s leash. There was a struggle,
a blur of pink and white, and then Uncle Sam threw his red and blue
into the kaleidoscope. The gentleman in petticoats fell, last of all,
upon the whole bunch, eclipsing them with his voluminous draperies.
When they arose from the scrimmage, Uncle Sam held Van in a deadly
grip, while Piggy was led away, squealing with rage and terror. Still
keeping his strangle-hold upon Van, Uncle Sam strode back to the
driveway, delivered the protesting culprit into Mary’s hands, and
mounted his float once more, a hero, who had saved his country’s honor
and his country’s pig from annihilation.
The procession moved on, and every one voted that Van’s impromptu act
with the pig was the prize feature of the whole show.
Mary shut the door on him.
“Did ye see the likes of that, now! Little imp that ye are,--sp’ilin’
the parade!
“No, ye’ll not get out ag’in, till the merrymakin’ do be over. Go to
bed in yer baskit, ye little spalpeen! Ye’ve disgraced us all.”
Then later:
“If they had hurted ye, Boy-Heart, I’d be afther givin’ ’em what they
desairve. An’ yer nice clothes, too, that was so pretty! What did ye do
wit’ ’em, annyhow? An’ what’ll Miss Betsy be doin’ to yez?”
When the parade was over and Betsy had returned to the house, she
looked Van over despairingly.
“Oh, Vanny-Boy! After all I’ve taught you about manners--think what
you’ve done. You’ve disturbed a good pig who wasn’t trying to do
anything but look beautiful. You’ve been disobedient. You’ve let your
feelings run away with you. No decent dog was ever so dirty. Your
lovely clothes are gone, I don’t know where, and you pretty near upset
the whole parade. I’m ashamed of you clear to my toes. And here I’ve
been trying to bring you up to be a real gentleman.”
The fallen princeling apologized so abjectly that Betsy could not help
laughing at him, for after all, it had been funny.
But sure enough, the nice clothes--where were they?
The necktie never came back. Some one handed Betsy the mangled remains
of the shirt and collar; the overalls were missing.
One day, the following summer, Betsy saw a bit of blue calico with
white polka dots sticking out from under the edge of the summer-house.
She drew it out--the damp, mildewed, faded remnant of Van’s past glory
and shame.
[Illustration: “It followed, dragging gruesomely at his side.”]
CHAPTER XIII
VAN IN DISGRACE
Van never forgot anything that he wanted to remember. Away back in the
time of his puppyhood Betsy had laughed when he had chased an old hen.
When the cats were pretty well thinned out, he, in his solitary
excursions, chanced on some half-grown chickens. He chased them a
little, and they fluttered and scrambled awkwardly away from him.
Now anything that runs is to be chased. Van always chased Betsy when
she ran with him on the lawn; yes, and he would growl and shake her
skirts. It would be good fun to see what these ungainly birds would do.
So he went for them, and they came right up to his expectations; they
plunged across the road, squawking and crying.
This was delightful! He would try nipping them.
That was still better fun. Pretty soon he caught one, gave it a little
shaking up, and it lay quite still and limp. He turned to find a
livelier one, but just then the mistress of the house where he was
trespassing, saw him, and he received a good banging over the head with
a broom.
He concluded that he had had enough sport for one day, and went home.
An hour later a boy from the house where the chickens lived, went to
Dr. Johns’ office with a dead chicken in his hand, for which Dr. Johns
promptly paid. It appears that chickens have a market value which cats
have not, and one may not destroy them so freely.
To punish Van away from the game would have been useless. Dr. Johns
gave forth the order that he must be kept at home, and not allowed out
except on a chain.
This was terrible. Van’s life had been one long joy, with no
confinement whatever, except in those early mad-dog days. The whole
world had been his, and now it was taken away from him--from him,
Prince Vanart VI.!
But alack and alas! this did not cure him. One morning he slipped out
through a carelessly unlatched door, and was off down the hill as fast
as his little legs could carry him.
By some luck--hard luck for Vanny-Boy--Betsy saw him and started after
him at the top of her speed, stopping only long enough to take the
whip. At the foot of the hill stood a house with a chicken-yard behind
it. A few stately old biddies were stalking around the lawn after worms
and insects, while a still statelier old rooster strutted up and down
importantly.
Van saw them and turned in. He must make the most of his liberty, and
no time was to be lost. He grabbed at an old white hen, but she was
too heavy for him. He turned away with his mouth full of feathers and
tackled another with the same result. By this time the whole lawn was
in an uproar, and had it not been so early in the morning some one
from the house must certainly have seen him.
Betsy was on the way, however, and she advanced to the rescue of old
hen number three. Van was very busy indeed, but these hens were all too
big. He gripped another, with one eye on the rooster;----
Down came the whip over his back, just missing him, for he was now
on his way to the chicken-yard, where the birds were smaller. Betsy
followed, and just as he made a dash for a nice broiler, she stepped
inside and closed the gate behind her.
The instant Van heard the click of the gate he knew that the jig was
up. He stood still, took in the situation, saw that there was no hope,
and came straight to his mistress. Down at her feet he lay, ready for
the inevitable whipping.
Oh, valiant little sinner! Why did you always make it so hard for those
who had to punish you? One may whip a coward, and feel that he deserves
it, but with two brave eyes looking up, not even begging for mercy, a
white body that will quiver, but not cringe under the lash, with no
sound of protest--how can one do it? Betsy needed all her own courage
for the task.
Without a whimper the plucky little dog went back to the house on
his chain, and care was redoubled to keep him at home. He showed no
remorse. He had had his fun and taken his punishment. Chickens were
decidedly the best sport yet, and his blood continued to leap at the
sight of a feathered temptation.
Poor Betsy! She was at her wits’ end. What could she do? The neighbors
would not stand for this sort of thing, and the day would come when
some one would kill him, and no one could blame the doer of the deed.
It could not matter to strangers what an adorable bit he was in his own
home. Indoors he obeyed like an angel, out-of-doors he tossed his head
and went his wicked ways.
Here was a problem that Betsy could not solve. The small sinner
knew very well that he was doing wrong, and he knew that punishment
followed, if he was caught. But he knew also that whippings do not last
forever, and while the chase was on, he could not think of what was
to follow--only a savage red triumph filled his brain. Nothing else
mattered for the moment. Those days with the Hospital attendants were
having their effect.
What should she do?
Once more Betsy tried him. She took him walking off the chain, but with
the whip in her hand. It made no difference. He turned in at the first
gate where his little nose said, “Chicken!” and this time he left four
half-grown victims dead on the field, and got clean away, without the
whip’s once touching him.
The owner of the chickens came over and displayed the results of Van’s
foray to Dr. Johns. He paid for the chickens, but he looked very grave,
and Betsy trembled.
Then the Johns family sat in judgment on the culprit. Something must
be done. Punishment had no effect on that proud spirit. Somehow they
must shame him. Dr. Johns had heard it said that if one hung the dead
chicken on the collar of the dog, it would cure him of killing. At
least the thing could be tried. With tears Betsy heard the verdict.
A red pullet was selected from the day’s kill, and tied to Van’s
collar, like the albatross around the neck of the Ancient Mariner, and
thus he was chained on the lawn near the house.
And why this was done Van did not understand. That was the worst
of it. Possibly, had the chicken been tied to him at the moment of
the killing, he would have known it to be a just punishment for his
slaughter of the innocent. But as it was he did not recognize in that
dead, limp Thing, the flapping, squawking broiler he had so gayly
murdered. When life had passed from his game he had no more use for it.
How could he understand?
But there it was, and he could not get away from it. Furtively he tried
to move off where he could not see it; it moved with him. He went to
the length of his chain in one direction, then the other; still it
followed, dragging grewsomely at his side. Turn as he would, there was
the Thing, feathered and awful, close to him, hanging to him! Oh, the
shame of it! He suffered as bitterly as if he were the first in all the
wide world to be so punished.
And misery upon misery! this debasement was public, for all the world
to see; and people came and looked at him, and talked about his
sinfulness, and he knew they were talking about him. Even Dr. Peters,
his friend, came across the lawn to see how he took it. Van slunk away
to the end of his tether, and tried to hide, oh, anywhere. There was
nothing to hide behind but the hated chicken, and he put his head under
that. He would not look up, no matter how kindly Dr. Peters spoke.
The fat young doctor came and looked at him, and the black-bearded
young doctor came and looked at him. Did they have no hearts? Could
they not see that all he wanted was to get down into the bottomless pit
of oblivion, where there were no curious eyes to pierce him through and
through?
Then Betsy came, and she sent the curious ones to the right-about. She
sat down by him, and looked sorrowfully at him, and he gazed up at her
with his pitiful brown eyes, and saw that his dear mistress understood.
He knew that there must be some reason why she could not set him free
from his loathsome burden. He hid his head in her skirts and whined.
“Vanny-Boy, Vanny-Boy,” she said, “it has to be. When we’re bad or
ign’rant we have to learn. It’s just like when Aunt Kate put those
black spots on my nails. I was as ’shamed as ’shamed. But it made me
remember.”
But Van would not be comforted, for he did not really understand. All
day he neither ate nor drank, although there was a bowl of water placed
for him, and a plate of most delectable viands prepared especially
by Mary. At nightfall Betsy came again, and he lay still, without a
sound, as if the fountains of grief had dried up within him. Betsy held
a bowl of cool water to his lips, and from her hands for the first
time he drank thirstily. He even tried to swallow a few morsels of
food that she gave to him. But he felt no hunger, only a gnawing shame
for something he did not comprehend, and his only comfort was Betsy’s
sympathy. Her he could always trust, for _she knew_, and whether he was
glad or sorry, triumphant or remorseful, defiant or humble, always she
knew the fine, brave, fearless, loving little heart that lay beneath
all his deeds or misdeeds, and she did not sit in judgment without
sweet Charity at her side.
When the dew fell she led him into the cellar, for with his “Albatross”
he might not sleep in his cosy basket. A soft bed was made for him in
the furnace room; he sidled into it, and lay down, without a sound.
All night he crouched there in the dark with that awful thing beside
him; moving when he moved, motionless when he lay still. Sleep did not
come to his eyes. His fearsome companion lay so stark and stiff, his
companion that he could not get away from. It destroyed all thought of
rest, and filled him with a wide-eyed horror; it was a long, lonesome,
terrible night.
Early in the morning his mistress came down with a delicious breakfast,
but he would not touch it. He looked up at her with great eyes hollow
with suffering, and made one pitiful little moan, so low that she could
scarcely hear it, and laid his nose on her knee with a long shudder.
Betsy could bear it no longer. She had slept no more than had the
culprit. She dashed upstairs for a knife with which to cut the hateful
burden loose; she tried to lead him up the stairs, but the ordeal had
so shaken his nerves that he could not mount the steps.
Then she carried him up in her arms; she gave him a warm bath, and laid
him on her own bed. He was mutely grateful, but his shame and disgrace
had laid him low.
For three days Van was very ill. Whether it was the shock of the
dreadful punishment, or of knowing that his loved ones could treat him
so--for still he did not understand--who can tell?
“If he kills all the chickens in the world, I’ll earn the money to pay
for them myself,” cried Betsy. “But I can’t stand that look in his poor
eyes!”
And there was no one in the whole family but felt that a mistake had
been made, that all this had been for nothing. And it was even so. Van
was up and around again soon, bright and winsome as ever, but Betsy and
Dr. and Mrs. Johns never forgave themselves. Somehow the punishment,
terrible as it was, did not bring home its lesson, and in spite of all
the suffering, it did not one particle of good. The love of battle,
murder, and sudden death was in his blood, and his first training had
been all wrong.
The Johns family held another meeting to which Van was not invited, and
in it they came to this decision:
That: whereas they could not themselves make a good dog of Vanart VI.,
he must be sent away to a trainer--to a kind of college where dogs are
taught their manners, their tricks, and their duties; and where, if it
is not too late, they may unlearn their bad habits and wicked ways.
On that last night before he went away, Mary cooked for Van the most
wonderful supper. He reveled in the tid-bits that he coaxed from every
one at the dinner table. Best of all, he was permitted to sleep on the
foot of Betsy’s bed. He did not know the reason for all this extra
indulgence, but he joyfully took the goods the gods provided.
“Kate,” said Dr. Johns, when Betsy had said good-night, and gone to
her room, “there’s another letter from that scoundrel. He takes quite
a threatening attitude, plays the high and mighty, says we are keeping
his child away from him unlawfully. The fond parent wants his beloved
child, etc. It is sickening, when we know what he really wants her for,
and that she would probably be abused and starved again. He might try
to get her in some way. I thought I’d better tell you, so we can be on
our guard.”
“What could he do?”
“Everything, unless the courts decide in our favor. I’ve arranged for
the earliest possible hearing. It may not be until spring, however, but
we can easily prove him incompetent as a father. Betsy has no love for
him, and would certainly choose us, and that would help. And when we
are assured that we have the custody of the child, we’ll adopt little
Betsy, regularly and in order. What do you say, Kate?”
For answer Kate put her arms around her husband, and kissed him
tenderly.
Late that evening, as Aunt Kate was going the rounds of the house, she
stopped at Betsy’s door and listened. The sound of a long-drawn gasping
breath met her ears, and she opened the door softly and went in.
The dim light of the moon shone in at the southern window, and Betsy
lay at the foot of her couch with one arm tightly around Van. The
little Knave of Hearts slept as soundly as if he had been a good,
obedient dog all his life.
Aunt Kate sat down beside the little maid, and Betsy’s free hand stole
into hers.
“Don’t cry, Betsy dear. He’ll come back all right, and be a good dog
forever after.”
“It doesn’t seem--it doesn’t seem,” sobbed Betsy, “as if I could
possibly live without him.”
“Betsy mine,” Aunt Kate squeezed the little hand tighter, “do you know
how we have grown to love you? I haven’t wanted to force you; I wanted
you to come to me of your own free will, but I must say just this; when
you get big enough to understand, you will know that Uncle Ben and Aunt
Kate never had any little children, and they wanted them; and there’s a
place all ready in their hearts. And when little Betsy is ready she can
crawl right in and stay there.”
One great sob burst from Betsy, a sob that seemed to break open the
very flood-gates of life. She lifted both arms and put them tightly
around Aunt Kate’s neck.
“Auntie Kate, Auntie Kate,” she whispered, and in the dark she was not
ashamed. “I do love you and I love Uncle Ben. I wouldn’t ever want
anybody better in the whole wide world.”
“Then I shall be the happiest woman on the Hill-Top, and with a little
girl of my own to love me.”
“And when Vanny-Boy comes back,” said Betsy, “we’ll be the very
happiest family that ever was.”
CHAPTER XIV
VAN’S BANISHMENT
It was late September, with a blue haze on the hills, and a low sun,
that made the red trees redder and the yellow trees yellower, just the
kind of a day for a little dog to run abroad, wild and free and glad; a
day that should have brought smiles to every one.
[Illustration: Pete.]
But no one smiled at the Johns’ breakfast table that morning. There was
no trunk to pack, for Van wore all the clothes he had--just his pretty
brown and white coat and his brass-studded collar. Betsy did, however,
roll up his blanket, as if he were a soldier on the march, and it was
to be taken along, in case he should be gone during cold weather.
Van capered and looked his gayest, when he was told that he was to go,
for he dearly loved traveling, and to go with Dr. Johns would be the
greatest fun ever. The good doctor himself had dropped his important
work at the Hospital to see the sinful Prince safely established at
college.
In spite of his chain, Van trotted and pranced, and almost dragged Dr.
Johns off his feet in his eagerness, as they went down the hill to the
trolley-station.
When the conductor had taken the fares, he came and sat down by Dr.
Johns. Van bobbed up gleefully, as if he and the conductor were on the
best of terms.
“Good morning, Dr. Johns. Hello, Van! Taking him on a vacation?”
“Hardly a vacation, I am afraid. In fact, it is quite the contrary.
He’s been killing chickens, and I’m taking him to Trimble, the
trainer, over in Westchester, to see if he can be cured of the habit.”
“That so? Well, now, I’m mighty sorry. He’s a great dog. I’d be glad to
own one of his kind, chickens or no chickens. You see me and the little
fellow are old friends.”
“Indeed? I wish the farmers around here could talk of him as kindly.”
“They would if they got acquainted with him, personal. You see, I’ve
been running on this Hospital car ever since he was a puppy. One day,
about a year ago, when he was a little tad, no bigger’n a pint of
cider,--you could put him in your pocket,--Miss Betsy took him in town
on my car, and he had the time of his life. He sat on the front seat
like a man, and there wasn’t a house or tree on the line that he didn’t
take in.
“Well, the very next day, at the same hour, I was startin’ to take my
fares, and, if you’ll believe it, there sat that little scamp, perky
and peart as you please, alone on the front seat, just where he had
sat with Miss Betsy, and lookin’ as if he owned the car. How he got up
there I don’t know; he was too small to climb. He must have taken it
flying. But there he was as sassy as a squirrel.”
Dr. Johns laughed. “Did he pay his fare?”
“Not he. I didn’t ask no fares of him. I let him ride for nothing to
the end of the line and back. Since then he’s had a free ride every
time he asked for it--more times than I can count. All the car men know
him.”
“He seems to make friends easily,” said Dr. Johns.
“Ha, ha! Not as easy as you’d imagine, Doctor. He gets his ride, and
he wags the thing he calls his tail at us; but none of us ever got him
to follow us. He always beats it up the hill back home at the end of
the trip. Now I’m mighty sorry he’s gone wrong. He must have been in
bad company. Here you are at the station, Doctor. Good luck to you. So
long, Van!”
Railway cars, too, were an old story to our hero. This time he sat
openly on the red plush seat, for this conductor also knew Dr. Johns.
The journey was not long. In an hour or two the brakeman shouted
“Westchester!” and the train stopped.
Dr. Johns and Van climbed down on the wooden platform of a station at a
small country village, and looked around.
A boy about ten years old, with honest blue eyes and many freckles,
came up and said bashfully,
“This yer’s the dawg?”
“If you are Mr. Trimble’s boy, it is,” said Dr. Johns.
“Yessir, I’m Mr. Trimble’s Pete. Pa’s gone away to-day, and he told me
to come fer the dawg.”
“All right, then. Now, this is Van, and you must take the best of care
of him, for he’s a great pet at home. He has some bad habits that your
father said he could break him of. I think I’ll go to the house, and
see where he is to be; there is plenty of time before the return train.”
Pete led the way, and Dr. Johns followed, still holding to Van’s
chain. Van gamboled happily along; there was no hint as yet of what
was to follow. There was a walk of about ten minutes from the station,
past two or three stores, four or five houses, then sunlit meadows.
They paused at last before a closely latched gate in a high fence of
palings. Pete unfastened the gate, closing it carefully after them, as
they went in and up the path to a low frame house, yellow, with green
blinds.
A woman, with a motherly face and eyes like Pete’s, came to the door.
“Mrs. Trimble, I suppose? I am Dr. Johns, from the Hospital.”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Johns. We was expectin’ you. This here is the dawg you
wrote about?”
“Yes, Mrs. Trimble. This is Vanart VI. May I see the place where he is
to be housed during his stay?”
“Sure you can,” said Mrs. Trimble, leading the way. “He will be kept in
that kennel right over there, and there’s clean straw in it.”
Dr. Johns looked around on a yard of ample proportions, where stood a
dozen or so good-sized kennels, some distance apart. Several of these
were occupied by dogs larger than Van. These were chained to their
kennels separately, so they could not reach each other. At sight of Van
they set up a chorus of barking and baying which was quite deafening.
Van strained with all his little might to get at them, for the size of
a dog never bothered him. He was no coward. But he was kept tightly on
the chain, and all acquaintance had to be carried on from a distance.
“Them there is young huntin’ dawgs,” said Mrs. Trimble. “They’re bein’
trained to hunt birds. Some is p’inters and some is retrievers and some
is setters. That there is a English setter, and these two fellers is
Irish setters. They’re about the purtiest of the lot, but they’re all
fine dawgs. We don’t get no mongrels here. I feed ’em, an’ I get to
likin’ ’em purty well,” she continued in her soft voice.
“That there is a blood-hound. He’s bein’ trained to hunt folks. I
don’t take much to that idea, but they’re useful sometimes, to catch
criminals.”
Van did not understand what Mrs. Trimble said, but he liked her. She
looked a little like Mary.
“Take good care of the little fellow, and see that he is taught not
to kill cats and chickens. I believe he will learn easily if he is
properly taught. He’s had no one to train him at home.” Dr. Johns
looked at the kennel that was to become the home of royalty. “You will
see that he is comfortable in the cold weather?”
All this time Pete had been hovering near. Already the brave, proud
head and beautiful, shapely body had won the boy. Now he spoke:
“He’ll be here in the kennel daytimes. Nights I guess Pa’ll let him
sleep in the house with me.” Then he added in a burst of confidence,
“He’s sech a purty little feller; I guess he’s some dawg, too.”
Dr. Johns smiled. Always Van appeared to get the best of what was
offered.
“I shall be glad if you look after him nights, my boy. He’s a
house-pet, and a kennel will be hard on him at the very best.”
Dr. Johns stooped down and took Vanny-Boy’s head in his two hands. The
little fellow shivered with a fear of something about to happen, and
looked up, with eyes big and questioning.
“Good-by, little Van. Be brave, and learn your lessons.”
Dr. Johns turned away, and hurried off down the road to the station, so
that no one should see his mouth quiver.
And the other end of Van’s chain was in the hands of little Pete, and
Van was left behind!
He stood still, dazed and astonished, until he saw Dr. Johns disappear
around a corner; then the truth flashed upon him. He had been deserted!
With a leap he started to follow, but the chain held him. He bounded
from side to side, he jerked, he tugged. He barked, he howled, he
yelped, he whined, he begged. It was all useless. The chain held,
although it took all Pete’s strength. All the other dogs set up a howl
of sympathy. They had been through the same sorrow, and not one of them
but had grieved over just such a cruel desertion. This was the College
of the Deserted--the Masterless Dogs.
Pete tried to comfort him, but he would have none of it. His grief was
too new and poignant. He struggled away, and tried to break the hated
leash. Howl after howl went up. The little dog who held up such a brave
head in the face of dangers was prostrated by sorrow. But this was more
than sorrow; it was anguish at a betrayal.
“Better chain him to the kennel, Honey,” said Mrs. Trimble. “He might
get away. Here, I’ll help you. My! but he’s a strong little feller!”
Van was dragged across the yard and fastened securely to the kennel,
and for an hour he tugged vainly at his chain, and rent the air with
heart-breaking howls.
Then he lay down and tried to gnaw the chain apart, but the steel links
hurt his teeth, and made his mouth bleed. Then he fell to howling once
more.
“Dr. Johns! Dr. Johns!” he seemed to say. “Take me home to my Betsy!
Take me ho-o-o-ome! Cruel! O cru-u-e-l!”
There was no answer, save the barking from the other kennels, for Pete
had gone about his daily duties, and could not attend to him. It was
Saturday, his father was away, and Pete was a manful little boy about
helping.
All that miserable September day Van cried bitterly. It had started so
happily, and now had come this terrible desertion and loneliness and
homesickness. He could not understand, and no one could tell him why
his Betsy did not come and rescue him. She had never failed him before.
Nightfall came on, and with it came Pete, with a bit of supper. It was
left untouched. Pete sat on the ground and reasoned with Van.
“Now, you little feller, you jest show yer grit. I know by your look
you got some. You mustn’t be a baby. You got to show some spunk. Pop
don’t let no dawg take on like that. Ef he was here he’d lick you and
make you stop. Now you be a good dog, and I’ll take you in the house.”
To the kitchen they went, and there the chain was slipped, and Van
could run free. Straight to the door he went, and lay down, with his
nose to the crack, where he could smell the outside air, and there he
whined pitifully, until Mrs. Trimble felt a tear on her own cheek.
“He does take on awful. Try and comfort him, Honey. Bring him here by
the fire, where it’s warmer. These pet dogs do make a heap of trouble
when they first come.”
“I hope he gets to like me,” said Pete. “He’s so purty. Come on, Van,
and let’s play we’re old friends.”
By inches Pete succeeded in coaxing Van in front of the stove, where he
sat, grave and silent, watching the streak of red coals through the
draft, with only now and then a sobbing whimper. Violent grief cannot
last forever. By and by he lay down alongside, with his nose on Pete’s
knee, and the sad brown eyes closed.
When bedtime came, he followed Pete up to the garret room, with its
sloping sides, and he spent the night snuggled close to the little boy.
Through the dark hours he forgot his sorrow and loneliness, forgot
that he was a poor, deserted waif, and in prison; forgot even his dear
mistress, his own Betsy.
[Illustration: “A long-drawn, homesick howl.”]
CHAPTER XV
VAN’S HARD LESSONS
Another day or two of vain grieving, and Van’s gallant spirit began to
react, and he showed more interest in the things around him. He would
eat his food, but he was grave and solemn, and not at all like the
merry rascal the Johns knew. It was not a bit like living at his own
home, where he had porter-house steak and liver for his daily food. But
he learned that hunger brings an appetite, and what he had was good for
him, so he soon ate contentedly, as did the other dogs.
The Trimble house was not large. The upper story consisted of two
bedrooms, Pete’s and another like it. Downstairs was another bedroom,
the kitchen, the dining-room, the woodshed, and, crowning glory of all,
the “parlor.” Like most treasures of its kind in the neighborhood, it
was kept with closed shutters, and one’s voice was lowered a little
when one crossed the threshold. Here Van was seldom allowed to come,
nor did he care much.
Sometimes, on Sunday evenings, when the minister and his wife came to
tea, a fire was lit in the Franklin stove in this sacred room. Then,
for an hour, until bedtime, Van and Pete would tread softly over the
woollen roses in the carpet, and sit before the blaze. Sometimes, too,
Van would even lean against the best black skirt of the minister’s
wife, who liked dogs. But these festive occasions came seldom, and were
not so lovely that Van longed for them. It was all so different from
home, where he ranged the whole house through, welcome everywhere.
He was no more the proud, haughty little Prince, with a whole family
to wait on him. Down in his lonely heart he grieved and grieved, and
often, as he sat in front of his kennel, he would utter a long-drawn,
homesick howl, as he thought of his Betsy, of Dr. Johns, of Mrs.
Johns, and Mary, and Treesa; of his basket in the kitchen, and all the
comforts of his beloved Hill-Top.
In the winter evenings he would lie by the dining-room stove, on one of
Pete’s old coats, and dream sadly of better days. He had really very
little to complain of in the treatment he received. That his luxuries
were few was no fault of the Trimbles, and indeed he was quite as well
off without them. The great tragedy lay in the chain and the closed
gate; the eternal longing for the old freedom, the wild rambles through
wood and field, and his dear family.
At bedtime he would be wrapped in his own blanket that smelled of home,
to sleep away the long nights. At the first crack of dawn he would
stretch himself, yawn, and walk from the foot of Pete’s bed up to where
the little boy’s tousled head lay on the pillow. There he would paw
at the coverlet until Pete woke up, and let him inside for one more
delicious snooze, before it was time for Pete to be out helping his
father with the chores.
But this was “College,” and the life he led was quite secondary to the
lessons which he was there to learn.
Mr. Trimble returned three days after Van’s arrival. He had been to
Boston, and had come back, bringing with him another dog, who was
chained in front of a kennel just as Van had been, and who went through
the same period of revolt and frenzy.
Mr. Trimble came over and looked at Van, and nodded approvingly as he
noted the points of the thoroughbred.
“No doubt about your breeding, young fellow, but how anybody ever let
such a dog as you are run wild, beats me. Why, you ought to be on the
benches at the shows, taking prizes. Well, you’ll have to mend your
manners; if you stay with me. But I’ll give you two or three days more
to git acquainted. And then, we’ll see what can be done with you.”
“You’ll let him stay with me nights, won’t you, Pop?” Pete was hovering
about anxiously.
“Land, yes, ef you want him. It won’t do him no hurt, and his
trainin’ll only take daytimes. He’s a house-coddled pet anyway, and
spoiled, like they always are. Hm! I guess his lessons’ll surprise him
some.”
“You won’t hurt him too hard, Pop?”
“Pete, you’ll never make a trainer. You’re too soft-hearted, like yer
Ma. You’ll make a better husband than me mebbe, but I’ll hev to learn
you another trade. Come, we’ve got to move them kennels over to the
other side of the yard, where they’ll git the sun in the cold weather.”
One bright cool morning, Mr. Trimble, after Pete had gone to school,
came out to Van’s kennel, and unfastened one end of his chain, still
keeping him confined.
“Your lessons begin now, young fellow. You’ll be wishing you had
leather pants in about five minutes.”
He led Van across the yard, wondering, but unsuspecting, to another
yard full of chickens of all sizes, from big old roosters, to
half-grown pullets.
“There,” he said, as he undid the chain from Van’s collar, “that’ll be
your happy home for a few minutes.”
Van took no note of the fact that Mr. Trimble had stepped inside the
yard and closed the gate, nor that he was holding his right hand
behind him. Instantly, at the sight of the chickens, all his old wild
instincts came to life within him. He forgot the changes, he forgot the
old punishments at the Hill-Top, forgot everything, except that here
was sport before him, and plenty of it.
He seized a nice, well-behaved little pullet, gave it one shake,
dropped it, and turned to find another, when there before him loomed
Mr. Trimble, large and terrible.
“DOWN, SIR!”
Van looked for Pete to rescue him. Pete was not there. The gate was
closed; there was not the slightest loophole for escape. He crouched at
Mr. Trimble’s feet, awaiting the punishment that he knew was coming.
He could stand a whipping. The fun of the crime to him had always been
worth the punishment.
The whipping came, swift and awful; not one of Betsy’s whippings, nor
yet of Dr. Johns’. No, indeed! It was like nothing that Van had ever
heard of or dreamed of. Mr. Trimble knew how to whip so it would be
remembered.
Van’s little body writhed with the pain and the smart of it, but
never a sound did he utter, not the faintest whisper. No soldier ever
showed more grit and courage. No Stoic ever shut his teeth more grimly
and silently. Even as the lashings fell, Mr. Trimble could not help
admiring that indomitable spirit; but duty must be done, and it _was_
done.
There was no doubt at all about that whipping. It was the real thing,
and a terrible surprise to the culprit. Mr. Trimble went away and left
him in the yard, with the dead chicken before him, and the live ones
all around him. For a long time Van lay without stirring. By and by Mr.
Trimble brought his kennel, and put it beside him; after a while Van
crawled in--a half-dead bundle of agony--and lay down and licked the
welts, quivering and trembling still with the awful awakening of his
first lesson.
He knew well enough why he had been whipped--the chicken had hardly
ceased breathing when the whip descended. Just now he did not want
even to think of chicken; he loathed the whole species. He was not
chained now, he might range from one end of the chicken-yard to the
other, but he had no such desire. In his shame he only wanted to crawl
off where no one could ever see him again. He knew at last what a bad
thing it was to kill innocent birds that could not help themselves.
Mr. Trimble went about other business and left Van while the punishment
soaked into his brain. The lesson must be thorough or it would do no
good at all.
A little freckled face under a tousled tow thatch popped through a
chink in the gateway. A voice breathless with running whispered,
“Van! Van! Are you there?”
A tiny, almost inaudible, whine was the answer.
Silently Pete slipped in, dropping his books inside the gate. He had
been on tenter hooks all the morning, for he knew that this was to be
the day of the “lesson,” and he had run all the way home. He shut the
gate carefully so that no one might hear.
Two blue eyes looked down pityingly into Vanny-Boy’s sad brown ones.
The kennel was large, and Pete slipped in bodily, and took the aching,
trembling sinner tenderly in his arms. He cuddled the little heaving
body close to his own.
“You pore little feller!” he whispered. “I jest couldn’t stand it. Pop
does lick awful sometimes. An’ it hurts too; _I know._ I hain’t never
been licked fer killin’ chickens, though, so mebbe I don’t know the
hull of it.
“My! Look at them stripes! I ain’t never had ’em on me like that.”
Tender hands were feeling all over Van’s little legs and sides. “Now
never you mind, Van, I brought sumpin to make ’em feel better.”
The “sumpin” proved to be a box of soft, oily stuff that had a queer
nice smell. Pete rubbed it all over the welts, taking great care not to
hurt them any more.
The oily stuff had a very good taste, and Van licked it all off
carefully. Then he snuggled close to Pete, with his sorrowful head
hidden in the little boy’s shirt.
“Now you jest git up as clost as you like, an’ go ter sleep an’ forgit
all about it. I’ll stay with you, and don’t you feel bad. I’m right
here, and I’ll take keer of you.”
Mrs. Trimble called Pete for the noon-day meal. There was no response.
She had her suspicions, however, went out, and peeped into the kennel.
There they lay, fast asleep, the tousled tow head and the smooth brown
one, close together, the doggie still breathing in sobbing gasps, but
comforted.
[Illustration: “He was home again and his college days were over.”]
CHAPTER XVI
THE JOURNEY HOME
In the afternoon Van’s kennel was put back into its old place, and he
lay there all day, sick, exhausted, and miserable.
Next morning he was turned loose once more in the chicken-yard, and Mr.
Trimble stayed outside. There was no one to interfere; Van might have
killed the whole flock, for anything that he could see to hinder. He
never glanced at them--not even at the smallest broiler. He was sick of
even the very thought of chickens. He lay down by the gate in the sun,
and licked the still smarting seams on his sides.
Roosters strutted proudly past him; old hens scratched placidly in the
dirt all around him; the young ones came and went right under his very
nose--it was all the same to him. One lesson was thoroughly learned;
and although for eight long months afterward he spent an hour every
morning in the yard with the chickens, never again was he known to
touch one.
Always, always, in Van’s lonely heart was the thought of home and his
beloved little mistress. But with a chain at the kennel, a high fence
all around the place, and a spring lock on the gate, there was not much
chance of escape.
So Van sat at the door of his kennel, or in the chicken-yard, watching
the gate where Dr. Johns had disappeared, and he grieved and grieved.
The days went by, the weeks and the months. Winter passed, the ice and
snow melted, and the spring came blithely in. The grass grew, and the
days became warm and soft. The April rains fell, and the sun dried the
puddles. The blossoms came out of their buds, and turned the peach
trees pink and the pear trees white. Mrs. Trimble’s daffodils came up,
gay and yellow, and Pete began to help his father in the garden-plot.
There were little chickens in the yard, now, but although Van spent his
hour there each day, he utterly ignored their existence.
One day was like another to him, as he sat listless in the sunshine,
or lay in his kennel when it rained, looking off over the far hills
out beyond the fence-palings. He was wishing, wishing, always wishing;
wondering if he would ever be a prince again, and if Dr. Johns would
ever come through the gate and take him home.
* * * * *
“Good morning, Trimble.”
Mr. Trimble turned his head; he was just setting Van loose among the
chickens. A strange man came toward him leading a dog that was to be a
new boarder at the College. Together they turned toward the kennels,
and were soon busy over plans and directions for the treatment of the
latest arrival.
Was it Chance that made Mr. Trimble forget to latch the gate of the
chicken-yard? And was it Providence that made the stranger close the
outer gate so gently that the spring did not fly back?
An eager brown head pushed the chicken-yard gate just far enough to let
a little brown and white body through; a streak like lightning passed
from this to the other gate; a click, and the spring did its duty; but
Van was _outside_!
Mr. Trimble looked around, looked again, and through the palings he saw
a flying shadow, heading westward down the road into the unknown. It
was useless to call. What dog on earth would come back to the call of
an alien master, when he had a Betsy to be hunted for the whole world
over?
That homing instinct of the dog! Who can understand it? Not we
humans, who have our finer senses dulled and blunted by civilization.
Neither can we understand the ways of that marvelous little bird, the
carrier-pigeon, who will travel hundreds of miles, straight as the
arrow flies, back to his home.
Van was free! Free, after eight long months of dull imprisonment! Free!
And nothing on earth but death could stop him now. It was a long road,
longer than he dreamed, but Betsy was somewhere at the end of it. He
would find her and his dear home!
And Mr. Trimble? He was in a state, to be sure. He left the new dog
and its master standing open-mouthed, while he ran as he had not run
before in years, to the grocery-store near the station. He seized the
telephone receiver, and this message went humming over the wires to the
nearest town that lay between Westchester and the Hospital:
“Hello! Hello! I want 569 Wilmington. No, 5-6-9! Yes,--in a
hurry!--Hello! That you, Stubbs? All right. Now listen! If you see a
fox-terrier,--white, with a brown head and saddle,--going through your
town, head him off and keep him for me. Name on his collar is Vanart
VI. He slipped out and got away from me. Get that all right? All right.
He’ll be along, if he doesn’t get lost, in about two hours or sooner,
if he keeps on going like he’s going now. Thanks! Hope you get him.
Call him ‘Van.’ Maybe he’ll come so you can catch him easy, if you act
friendly. So long!”
So the news traveled ahead, but Van knew nothing about that. He kept
on, with his nose pointed homeward, always homeward.
Out of Westchester he went under full head of steam. There were no
neighbors with telephones to stop him along the way, and the road was
clear. Past meadows and farmhouses, through still forests and thickets
of green laurel, wading and leaping across boggy lowlands and scaling
rocky highlands, ever he ran on.
A hedge-hog stared stolidly at him from the roadside; a chipmunk
sputtered from a stone wall; Van never noticed them. A cat with four
kittens basked temptingly on a hitching-block--Van might have been
blind for all he saw of them.
By and by he tired a little, and slackened his pace, as if he realized
that a long journey cannot be continued at top speed, but he did not
stop. Now the long Main Street of Wilmington stretched out before him,
and he entered the town at a steady trot.
Down past pleasant houses under stately rows of elms he went. A boy at
a stable door called out, “Hey, there, Van!” A child stooped to pat
him, and said, “Hello, Van!” He barked, as if to say, “My business
leads me elsewhere,” and kept on.
A man stepped out of a corner grocery shop, and held out his hand.
“Here, Van! Here, Van! Good doggie! Come here!”
Van stopped still and looked hard at the man. Could he be an old
friend? No, that was surely a stranger. Van edged away as the man
reached for his collar, and bobbing his head with a side-long jerk, was
off again down the road.
“Hey! Ketch that dawg!” shouted the grocery man, and the cry was taken
up all along the street. Men, boys, and women all turned out to chase
or head off the fugitive. Everybody was yelling: “Van! Van! here, you!”
for the news of the runaway had been spread abroad in the village
before his arrival. Never was dog so enthusiastically greeted by a
whole village of entire strangers. Van smelled treachery.
A friendly gate stood open, and he dodged in to avoid a too eager boy.
Down to the rear of the lot he raced. Alas! It ended it an open stable
door. Here the breathless Stubbs pounced upon him, and he was captured.
“There, you little rascal, I’ve got you!” panted Stubbs. He was fat,
and dog-catching is perspiring work. “You’ve given me a pretty chase,
but you’ll be back at Trimble’s by night, I reckon.
“Now what did you run away for? Trimble’s a good fellow, and you hadn’t
ought to give him trouble,--not to mention the shaking up you’ve give
me. Come on, and we’ll get a chain on you, so we can keep you till
Trimble gets here.”
Van kept very still. He was thinking what he should do next. He gave a
little shudder when Stubbs said “chain.” He knew that word, and just
what it meant.
Stubbs tucked him under his arm. This seemed like a very tractable dog
indeed. Stubbs reached up to mop his bald head with his handkerchief.
Van felt the loosened tension, and with a sudden jerk backward, he
wriggled out of the man’s arm, and out of his own collar. In a
twinkling he was going like Time-on-a-holiday, westward. In a few
minutes Main Street and his pretended friends were left far behind, and
he was out in the open country.
All day he traveled--now fast, when the fear of capture spurred him;
now slow, when his aching legs and muscles cried out to him. He was
hungry and thirsty, but he dared not stop and beg a drink, for fear
some one might catch him again. The sun was dropping behind the
hills when he felt that he could not drag himself another foot. He
was passing a tiny farmhouse hidden away in the hills. There was a
delicious odor wafted to him, and he heard a suggestive, sizzling
sound. He certainly could not resist that. Yet he dared not make a
noise. He crouched by the gateway.
A little boy about Pete’s size, with the same blue eyes and tow hair,
came up the road, driving a solitary cow. As he turned in at the gate,
he almost stumbled over a poor, panting, tired little dog, who lay
crumpled in a heap, with mouth agape, and dry tongue lolling from
between his teeth. He wore no collar, and with the dust of the road
soiling his white coat, no one would ever have suspected him to be a
prince.
“Why, hello!” said the boy. “What you doin’ here? You look tired to
death. Come here and speak to me.”
He held out his hand; but Van had been caught once that day, and lay
still. He whined a little.
“You pore little tyke, I bet you’re hungry. Have you been runnin’ away?
Now, see here, I ain’t goin’ to tell on ye, and ef you’ll stay right
here I’ll bring ye half my supper.”
Van lay exhausted in the fence-corner, and presently the boy slipped
out with a large slice of bread and butter, and a bit of bacon, and,
best of all, a bowl of cold water.
Ah, but that water was good! Van lapped it thirstily, every drop. Then
he fell upon the bacon and the bread and butter, as greedily as the
veriest tramp that ever lived.
“My! Ye shore was hungry,” said the boy. “I’d git ye more ef I dasted
to; anyways, ye won’t starve. Landy! I’d like to keep ye, but Pa
wouldn’t let me. Anyways, ef ye’ll come with me, I’ll fix ye up a bed.”
Van followed the boy that looked like Pete into a dilapidated barn.
The boy doubled an old horse blanket in a corner of the hay-mow.
“Ye kin sleep there, and ye kin git out in the mornin’ through that
busted board. There! Jinks! I wish’t you’d stay with me. I’d like to
keep ye, awful. I wish’t Pa liked dawgs.”
Up in that hill-cabin home the little boy’s hungry heart yearned to the
starved heart of the runaway Prince, and he stooped and kissed him.
Then he drew away, as if ashamed, even in the dusk, of so silly an
action, and went back to the house, trying to whistle.
Van slept without stirring, until the cold fingers of the dawn made him
stretch his stiffened limbs, and realize that he was in a strange land,
and that he must be getting on to his home on the Hill-Top. He stole
out through the broken board, and was off in the gray of the morning,
breakfastless but rested.
And it was westward ho! through the chilling mists, and westward ho!
when the sun rose at his back to warm and cheer him. It was westward
ho! when the sun shone high and hot above his head, and his mouth was
dry and parched again, and his legs moved slowly and stiffly, as if he
had aged ten years.
Now his road dropped suddenly over a hillside; down it wound and wound,
till Van thought he would never reach the bottom that was hidden by the
forest that bent over him on all sides. It was a wild, deep glen. But
far below there was the sound of rushing, gurgling water!
He pricked up his drooping ears. A minute ago he had felt that he was
like to die, but there was life calling to him again.
Above his head stretched a vast railway trestle, over which a train was
crawling, with groans and screams of iron wheels on iron rails. That
might be a wonderful thing to men, but nothing called to Van but the
singing stream and his own Betsy.
He dropped down, down, to the lowest level of the gully, and stretched
himself flat on the green moss, with his hot nose in the laughing
water. Oh, it was good! He drank and drank till his thirsty body was
satisfied, and his tongue grew cool, and like a real tongue, instead of
like a slab of fire in his mouth. He drank till he wanted no more. Then
he fell asleep on a heap of leaves, a long deep sleep.
All the afternoon he lay there. The sun set, the stars came out, and a
little moon climbed high and looked down into the ravine; shining white
on the heaving body of a lonely waif of a dog, collarless, homeless
and piteous. The little moon traveled on and followed the sun over the
hill, and out of sight. The stars grew pale and the dawn of another
morning trembled in the forest aisles. Down along the stream lay a
thick, icy fog, like a long roll of cotton batting.
Van, waking at last from that long sleep, looked out into the mist,
dazed and lost and shivering. Slowly his senses came back to him. His
stomach cried out to him that he had had nothing to eat since the night
before last; his legs told him that they had carried him faithfully and
far, but that they could not last forever; and then his homing instinct
told him that he must cross that little roaring stream if he would
follow the road that led across the world to his little mistress.
What mattered that old hatred of water now? In he plunged, and the
rushing current carried his weak, struggling body far along before
he could make the farther shore. But make it he did. He crawled up
on a shelving curve, dragged himself out, shook the water from his
shivering sides, and started off on a run that warmed him and saved him
from a chill.
The run changed to a weary plod before he reached the top of the
ravine, but he kept on--westward, always westward! Wood, hill, valley,
farm, forest again--he went by them with only one thought. On the road
he picked up a crust of bread, dropped by some schoolboy, and devoured
it greedily.
Through another town. Here he went warily, dodging everybody. He passed
through safely, and journeyed on and on. If only his strength could
last until he reached home!
There was another town ahead. He approached it cautiously. There was a
something familiar about it. The streets had a smell that brought some
memory to his numbing faculties.
Now, in the gathering twilight he found himself stumbling across a
great bridge that spanned a wide, flowing river, and the lights of
still another town fell down deep into its limpid depths like golden
piles.
Ho, ho! Surely he had crossed that bridge before, in his wild
wanderings of other days! Surely, surely! He went a little faster.
And now he knew--on the farther side lay his own home-town. It was a
short half-hour’s run, when one was feeling fine, to the Hill-Top,--and
HOME!
HOME! The thought spurred his lagging feet. Down through the dear old
streets where he had often trotted so gaily went Van. He had no thought
for them now. “Betsy! Betsy!” his heart breathed; and that alone kept
him going.
An attendant from the Hospital noticed him and turned to watch him as
he wavered out of sight.
“If that dog was fatter and pearter and cleaner and had a collar on,
I’d say it was Van, even if I knew that he was in another part of the
country.”
* * * * *
Betsy sat on the steps of the honeysuckle porch in the soft May night,
with the young moon silvering the glossy leaves around her. She was
thinking of the changes that had come to her,--of the red house up
in Wixon’s Hollow, now so far away. She wondered a little what had
become of her father, but she did not trouble her soul very deeply;
she remembered him only as one to dread and hide from. Then she thought
of all that Aunt Kate had done to make her more like gentlefolk, of the
lessons she had learned in the care of both soul and body.
Indeed, could she have compared her old self to the little white-clad
figure with its soft halo of hair, its sweet fragrance of cleanliness,
its childish grace and dignity, that had grown to be unconscious of
itself, she would not have recognized the Betsy of two years ago. There
was much yet to learn, but with so lovely a teacher as Aunt Kate, who
could fail of doing her best?
Then she wondered how it fared with little Van. Would he come back from
College like the knights of old from their quests, bearing a badge of
honor? When would he come, and did he remember her and long for her as
she longed for him? She sighed a bit of a sigh.
The sigh was echoed below her! She looked down, startled.
Something small and white dragged itself out of the dark, and stretched
along the ground at her feet, flat, as if life had gone out of it.
Betsy stooped and touched it, once, then she gathered it in her arms.
Van opened his tired eyes, kissed Betsy’s thumb, said “Woof!” and
settled back contentedly.
He was home again, and his college days were over!
* * * * *
Out on the lawn a dark figure watched until the light flared up in
Betsy’s room. Then the man shook his fist and muttered, as he slowly
slouched away and disappeared in the night,
“Ef that cur hadn’t happened along, I’d ’a’ had her where she couldn’t
holler. Courts, indeed! They’ve got me down here to try an’ prove that
my own flesh and blood ain’t mine, an’ I can’t do what I choose with
’er. That Johns feller thinks he can rob me by proving that I ain’t
fit. I’ll show him one thing I know about law. _Possession_ is nine
points of the law, and I guess he’ll squirm when he finds that I’ve
clinched the tenth point. I guess Bet’ll come down from her high horse
a mite. I’ve waited about long enough. I’ll show ’em!”
[Illustration: “‘Pa!’ said Betsy.”]
CHAPTER XVII
VAN THE RESCUER
It was a June morning; the air was soft, still, and windless. Betsy
came out on the honeysuckle porch carrying a basket of lunch. Van lay
there in the sweet sunshine.
“School is over and vacation has begun, Vanny-Boy, and Aunt Kate says
we may have a picnic, if you’ll take good care of me. We’re going up to
the Reservoir, and we’re going for a whole day. We are going to have
the time of our lives. Now, what do you think of that?”
With a bark of joy he began dancing around her, and all the way past
the buildings he measured the rods with little yelps of delight.
Freedom was his once more, and gladness radiated from him in every
direction. Eastward, up Bow Lane they turned, Van always in the lead,
while straying cats and chickens no longer needed to flee at his
approach.
A sleepy, winding road was Bow Lane, making a great curve past meadows
and farmhouses, till it lost itself in the hills. A golden glow filled
all the valley ahead of them, and the hills rose out of the mist like
dreams, barely outlined in delicate amethyst against the glory of the
sky. Down into a ravine they went, where a brook sang its morning song
far below the bridge that spanned it. Here Van leaped from rock to
rock down the steep bank to the very edge of the little stream, and
lapped his fill of the sweet water. Across the brook he bounded, never
wetting his feet, then up the other side as if he were a winged thing,
till he joined Betsy once more.
Up the brook a little way, on a boulder, sat a tramp, who started as he
saw the dog, and then looked up to watch the little girl as she crossed
the bridge. But Betsy did not see him, and Van only gave a contemptuous
bark in his direction.
On and on they went, up the brown road that unwound itself out of the
mist between two lines of velvety green. The country swam higher and
higher out of the vapor, and resolved itself into fields of standing
corn, wheat, or clover, that spread everywhere, dew-pearled. The
rainbow ropes that bound earth to sky spun themselves up, up, till the
dreaming hills turned from amethyst to sapphire, then emerald.
Out of the fog that veiled the upland, sprang an army of tall, thin
cedar trees, standing like soldiers, singly or in groups. They appeared
to be marching up the hill in a happy-go-lucky way, as if it were not
necessary to keep rank and step when armies go on a holiday. Betsy
saluted gayly as she passed, and it almost seemed as if they returned
the salute and presented arms, so friendly did the whole world appear
that lovely morning.
Now Betsy and Van plunged through a grove of chestnuts and beeches,
where the road looked like a tunnel of green, opening into fairyland.
Beyond lay a fallow field. Here they left the road, and waded knee-deep
through grass and flowers hung from tip to tip with filmy fairy
garments, tended by spidery washerwomen.
Betsy laughed at her soaked shoes, and shook defiance at the dew with
her short skirts. Van cared for nothing except to race hither and
yonder, covering ten feet of distance to Betsy’s one, until he was
halted by a mass of rock too high and steep for him to clamber over. He
looked back to see what his mistress would do in the face of such an
obstacle. But Betsy knew the secret, and instead of trying to climb,
she simply skirted the foot of the rocks until she came to an opening,
where a narrow, grassy path led around the barrier, and there before
them lay the miracle!
A great limpid opal, in whose bosom were reflected the white rocks and
tall forests of the hill-summit, every pebble, every leaf, hanging
from the shore-line, as perfect in the reflection as in the reality.
Oh, this was surely a morning to lose all sight of the border-land
between the Land of Everyday and the Land of Faery! This was the
Reservoir, made by the hand of God to store water, cool, clear, and
wonderful, for man’s use. Betsy’s delight grew in thrills as she
settled herself under an overhanging rock, to take in the marvel of it.
“Now, Van, you can turn yourself upside down and inside out. There’s a
squirrel! You may chase him, if you want to, and there’s a butterfly,
and you may chase him, too. Only don’t go off and leave me.”
What a morning that was! Every minute full of new delights, and all too
short. Hunger pressed them at an early hour to take their nooning, and
they refreshed themselves with the contents of the basket, and drank
tin cups of nectar from the opalescent pool. Van sat up and begged and
did every trick he knew in payment for the largess with which Betsy
rewarded him. He even risked his life doing “Dead Dog,” for he did it
in the face of a piece of doughnut, and with such absolute abandon that
he started rolling down the bank, and was only saved from being really
a dead dog, or rather, a wet one, by Betsy, who clutched him just as he
was going over the edge.
A thin film of gray had drawn itself over the sky until the gold was
all gone, and the sun had quite disappeared. The air had grown hot and
breathless.
“I think I’ll take a rest,” said Betsy at last. “It’s as still as
anything up here.”
She curled herself up in a grassy hollow where the early sun had dried
the dew, and Van also curled himself comfortably on her skirt, and was
soon in the Happy Hunting Ground of Dreams.
A strange stillness settled over the place; nothing stirred save an
uneasy bird in the thicket across the pool; the pool itself became a
gray pearl in a setting of silence. Everything in the world seemed
asleep, and Betsy caught the general drowsiness, closed her eyes, and
passed off into visions of Elfland.
Presently she awoke. She felt a curious sensation, as if some one was
watching her. Van gave a low growl. She rose to her knees, looked
around, and saw a man looking down at her.
Suddenly her heart stood still, and her breath caught in her throat.
She looked again.
“Hullo, Bet!”
“Pa!” said Betsy.
“Sure it is. It took ye some time to recognize yer dad. Wasn’t
expectin’ the pleasure, was ye? My! but ye look as neat as a cotton
hat. Yer Aunt Kate’s dolled ye up mighty fine. But _she_ can’t hev ye.
Ye are goin’ to come along with _me_. I need ye. I jest been waitin’
till I caught ye off by yerself. They beat me in court this mornin’,
but I seen ye comin’ up here afore they done it, and now, by gum, I’ll
beat _them_!”
All Betsy’s heart rose in revolt--to go back to the old days of hunger
and rags and beatings! This was not her father. It was the man who had
killed her mother by leaving her to starve.
“I’m not going with you,” said Betsy, sturdily.
“Oh, yes, ye air.”
“I won’t go. You went off and left us, and Ma died, and I ’most did.
You aren’t my father any longer.”
“Oh, yes, I am, Miss H’ighty-t’ighty, an’ I’d like to hear any one else
say I ain’t. A child’s duty is to its dad, and ye air goin’ to come
right along with me, and the Court kin go to kingdom come. I got ye a
nice new ma, and she’ll curl yer hair fer ye. Ye won’t need yer Aunt
Kate.”
Betsy stood aghast. She could not speak for the horror of it all. This
father who, in the old days, had beaten her for little or nothing, who
had deserted his family, leaving them in the face of dire poverty,
taking with him all the money in the house, now claimed her. She was
not so young that she had not known and understood it all. She summoned
up all the strength of her eleven years.
“I won’t go, I tell you!”
“An’ I’d like to see ye help yerself.” He seized and lifted her from
the ground with no effort.
“Ye ain’t much weight. I kin manage ye all right. Keep still, will ye!”
Betsy kicked and screamed and struggled.
“Now, let up, there. Ye kin kick and screech, but ’twon’t do ye no
good; there ain’t no one to hear ye.”
Van, who had been keeping up a low growling, thought this was the cue
for him to enter. With a leap he caught the man’s leg in his teeth,
and held on with all the strength and tenacity of that bull-dog
ancestor of his.
“Leggo,--you!” snarled the man, but Van held on valiantly.
“You call off that dog, Bet, or I’ll kill him, and I’ll lam-bast you!”
Betsy, thoroughly frightened for her pet, made Van let go; but her
heart was so full of anger that any thought of fear for herself was
banished. She only felt that she must keep still, and not make things
worse. She must think, hard.
“Make that dog go home!”
“Home, Van! Go home!”
Van slunk to the rear, but Betsy, looking back, saw him standing,
grieved and bewildered. Then, after a minute he disappeared.
“Ye kin walk ef ye like, but I’ll keep an eye on ye, and a hand, too.”
Half leading, half dragging her, Al Wixon went deeper into the forest
on the far side of the pool. A trackless way it was, but they came out
at last in a tiny clearing where stood a hut, apparently deserted. It
was, in fact, only a wooden shanty that had been built for temporary
shelter near an abandoned quarry.
“There! I’ll hive ye up here till I git my things and come back. Ye
can’t git out, and it’s no use to holler. No one kin hear ye. We’ll
start to-night, and work along up New York State and into Canady, and
then ye kin sing fer yer Aunt Kate. I reckon ye thought ye was goin’ to
be made a lady of, did ye? Gosh! Ye air growin’ purty! Look like yer ma
used ter, a leetle mite.”
“Don’t you speak of my mother to me,--you----!”
“He, he! Spitfire! Well, I kin lick that out’n ye when we git to
Canady. Now set easy, and ef you yip, I’ll take yer head off! I’ll be
back afore night. I got to git some duffle I left in town.”
Al Wixon’s footfalls died away, and Betsy drew a longer breath and
looked around. There was only one window and a door. The window was
nailed up on the outside, and the door, too, was fastened on the
outside with two bars put rudely across. The window had only one pane
of glass, anyway, and was too small to crawl through, even if the glass
were broken.
Betsy leaned against the door to think. She would be taken away, and
would never see Aunt Kate and Uncle Ben again. And Van would be left
behind. Where was the little comrade now?
“Oh, Vanny-Boy!” she wailed.
Sh! What was that? She listened. A scratching sound, and then a little
whine on the other side of the door.
“Van!” she whispered. “Oh, my little Van, are you there?”
The answer was a desperate scratching in the dirt under the door, which
had no sill. Betsy could hear the dirt fly, as Van worked madly to get
in to his mistress. An inspiration leaped in her brain.
“He’s digging under to get in to me. Why can’t I dig, and get out to
him?”
It was the one chance. She looked around the bare little room. Nothing
there, except a small rusted stove in one corner, now falling to
pieces, and the floor was simply the dirt of the clearing. Not a thing
to dig with. Yes, there was one thing, the lid on the top of the little
stove. It was red and eaten with rust, but still stout enough for
service.
“Now,” she said, as she settled to work, “we’ll make the hole big
enough in no time, and if Pa doesn’t get back too soon!----”
She wasted no more breath on words. The old stove-lid proved an
effective instrument in the light earth. Together they worked; Betsy
inside and Van outside the old door. If her father came back before the
hole was big enough, he might kill Van, and she would never get back
to the Hill-Top. Desperately she worked; her breath coming in little
sobbing gasps that caught and choked her. With nervous, trembling hands
she dug down, and down. The ground had been packed by the tramp of the
quarry-men in days past, but the earth-worms had lightened the soil a
little, and it was possible, even with the mean tool she held, to dig
into it.
Soon a black muzzle was in sight; a few more strokes on either side,
and Van had wriggled through and was in her aching arms.
But she must not stop. She must keep on digging. Van seemed to
understand. He did not bark, but stood, alert and eager, waiting.
Now Betsy could get her head through the hole, now her shoulders;
then a few more frantic strokes of the old stove-lid, and she dragged
her whole body through the opening. Her pretty dress was torn and
earthstained, but she was _free_!
A light rain was beginning to fall; she did not mind that, only there
were no long afternoon shadows to point the way home, and even the
little country-bred Betsy was quite lost. Which way should she turn? In
any case she must get out of the clearing and into the woods where her
father could not find her.
She started to run to shelter, but Van gave a short, quick bark, and
ran in the other direction. Then he came back, and off again, as if he
would have her follow him.
“Perhaps he knows,” thought Betsy. She turned and followed him across
the clearing and into the forest.
And Van did know. Many a time he had scoured those woods with Thatcher,
and even if he had never had been there before, he could have followed
his own trail back. With his nose to the ground, he started into a
gully, looking back to see that his mistress was coming; then down
a rocky hill into a place so dark that it seemed as if the twilight
had already come. Now up and out, through some burned ground, over a
brook, through a long stretch of unbroken wood, and then, before them
lay the Reservoir, its gray mirror broken into millions of tiny ripples
by the falling raindrops.
Beyond lay the field of the cedar soldiers, on guard. Betsy knew the
way now, although the dusk was gathering. Across the valley she could
see the Hospital buildings looming, and the lights as they flashed up
in the corridors.
Something was coming! Was it her father returning? She must hide.
Crouching behind a boulder and holding Van’s muzzle she waited.
A man bearing a pack on his back slouched past, and went on up the
road they had just traveled. Betsy’s heart stopped pounding as he
disappeared. She started once more on her journey, but drew back as
another sound was heard. Listen! That was a carriage, surely. In the
waning light Betsy peered from behind a tree, and then leaped to meet
the coming vehicle.
They were both there, Uncle Ben and Aunt Kate, bundled up in
mackintoshes. Aunt Kate sprang to the ground, and straight into
her arms ran a bedraggled, wet little figure, while Van leaped in
ecstasies.
“My darling! My own child!”
“Auntie Kate, Uncle Ben! Oh, Auntie Kate, Pa tried to get me, and he
shut me up and Van scratched me out.” In a flame of words, tears, and
laughter the whole story was poured out.
They drove home through the gathering night and falling rain, Betsy
tucked in the middle, and Van at her feet. Presently Betsy asked,
“He couldn’t have me, could he, Auntie Kate?”
“No, dear. And we have something to tell you; it was to have crowned a
happier day than this. But the end is all right. The court has decided
the matter. The man who was your father will never dare come again,
and Uncle Ben and I have legally adopted you, so now you are our very
own little girl. This was Alvin Wixon’s last effort, after his failure
before the judge.”
Betsy slipped an arm around each of the two who were beside her.
“Why, then,--you are my father and mother,--and--My! but I’m glad!”
“And you are not Betsy Wixon any more. From now on you are Betsy Johns.”
“Oh, Auntie Kate--Mother!” whispered Betsy.
The heart of Betsy was unlocked now, forever.
THE END
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