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
“Then the people went away, all but one young lady, and in the gutter
he saw a little terrier lying; its front leg was broken, and though
it was partly stunned, its eyes were full of pain and terror. Before
he could reach the dog the lady had gone to it, tied her handkerchief
around the hurt paw, and lifting it up very gently, and in spite of its
being bloody and dirty, carried it away. When she had gone a little
distance down a side street she stopped and hesitated. Then father
overtook her and asked if he might help with the dog. She said that she
had just remembered that she did not live in the city, and that as they
would not let her carry the dog on the street cars, she was wondering
how she could get it home.
“Father said that he would gladly carry it to the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals’ Hospital, and so, without even thinking they had never
been introduced, they walked along together, and the poor little dog
stopped moaning and licked father’s hand. When they got to the hospital
the people said that they would chloroform the dog dead, or if it was
a pet they could cure it, for they thought it must be a pet, otherwise
two nicely dressed people would not be likely to get themselves all
smeared up to bring it to the hospital. Of course it wasn’t a pet, only
a yellow brown, wire-haired terrier with back legs that didn’t exactly
match the front. The lady was going to say ‘chloroform him,’ when he
struggled up on three legs and licked her nose, so she changed the
words to ‘cure him if you can, and I will pay,’ and she told her name
and address.
“Then father found that she was the sister of one of his college
chums, and so you see by and by they were married. She turned out to
be mother, and we had that terrier for ever so long, though he always
had one bent paw and limped. Father christened him Accident, and we
called him Axy for short. And when he grew old and died, we began the
dog cemetery beyond the orchard with him, and after that father bought
Waddles for me.”
Anne told the story almost as if she was reading it from a book, for
it was very real to her, and both she and Tommy were never tired of
hearing their father repeat it.
She had barely ended when the door flew open and in bounced Quick,
Tip, and Hamlet, followed by Miss Jule. With a rush and whirl the
dogs pounced upon Miss Letty, and began to dig her out from among the
pillows as if she had been a rabbit in its burrow, while Anne vainly
tried to call them off and rescue the snowy bedspread.
Miss Jule looked from one to the other with a question in her eyes as
she saw her niece’s flushed face, but she received her answer when she
read the letter that Letty handed her. She put it back in its envelope,
saying dryly: “I claim you until the six months are up, after that we
shall see. Meanwhile Mr. Hugh has asked you all to go to-morrow and
picnic on the new land he has bought that lies between the river and
Pine Ridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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