Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of HousepeopleWright, Mabel Osgood
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Dogtown: Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Dogs -- Juvenile fiction
In reality, by this time Lily had crossed the rails and was quite safe,
but her master’s cry made her turn to locate him. Whether she thought
he was in pain or danger no one knows, but at that moment the train
rounded the curve, whistling furiously. To the bewildered dog it must
have been associated with her master’s scream or else sounded like
a challenge, for like a flash she turned and charged the monstrous
engine face to face. Tommy cast himself face downward on the roadway,
his tears making mud of the dust. Anne caught hold of the railing and
closed her eyes while the train thundered by underneath. Lily lay quite
still high up on the bank; the engine had been quickly merciful.
That afternoon Baldy buried Lily in the corner of the orchard pasture
where there was quite a company of pet animals, ranging from canaries,
with school slates for headstones, to Brownie, the dear old pony that
had belonged to Anne’s mother when a girl, and lived out a happy old
age in that very pasture. One thing about pet animals is that their
lives at best are so short, that we should treat them very kindly to
make up for it.
Some of the neighbours laughed at what they called Unhappy Hall
Cemetery, but Anne resented this with a good deal of spirit, saying, “I
think that it is very mean to love an animal one day, when it is alive
and can amuse you, and then throw it on the ash heap the next, just
because it’s dead and can’t help itself.”
Tommy still crying, and remorseful at perhaps having caused Lily’s
death by calling her at the wrong moment, insisted upon Miss Jule,
and his father, and mother attending her funeral. Anne made a wreath
of her best flowers, sacrificing four tea rosebuds and all of her
mignonette and heliotrope, but Tommy would have none of it. Instead, he
begged two beef bones from the cook, and tying them together crosswise
with Anne’s best pink hair ribbon, which she had not the heart to
deny him, put them on the middle of the mound, saying between sobs,
“She--loved--bones--but--she didn’t like flowers--except to sleep on,”
which was perfectly true, her favourite places for a siesta having been
alternately the verbena, nasturtium, or lettuce bed.
Tommy’s father and mother were resigned, though they did not say much
about it before the children. Complaints had begun to reach their
ears that Lily not only felt it her duty to prevent strange people
from coming near Tommy, but declined to let them pass by on the road
unchallenged; and though they cherished all animals, they never allowed
them to become a nuisance or bore those who cared less for them.
Baldy was also resigned and spoke his mind freely, much to Tommy’s
chagrin.
As for Dogtown, it was jubilant to the barking point, especially among
the lower classes, consisting of those dogs who, being in reduced
circumstances, had been used to come shrinking and timid between dusk
and dawn for castaway bones or swill-pail dainties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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