American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
They were rolling those babies and the doll around the grass in a
wheelbarrow, and the wheel came off, and that's how Freckles happened to
go over.
“Up in the attic,” says the taffy-coloured-haired one, when he had fixed
up the wheelbarrow, “there's a little old express wagon with one wheel
off that would be better'n this wheelbarrow. Maybe you could fix that
wheel on, too, Harold.”
Freckles, he fell for it. After he got the wagon fixed, they got to
playing charades and fool girl games like that. The hired girl was off
for the afternoon, and pretty soon Mrs. Wilkins hollered up the stairs
that she was going to be gone for an hour, and to take good care of the
twins, and then we were alone in the place.
Well, it wasn't much fun for me. They played and they played, and I
stuck to Freckles--which his name was called nothing but Harold all that
afternoon, and for the first time I said to myself “Harold” seemed to
fit. I stuck to him because a dog should stick to his boy, and a boy
should stick to his dog, no matter what the disgrace. But after while
I got pretty tired and lay down on a rug, and a new kind of flea struck
me. After I had chased him down and cracked him with my teeth I went to
sleep.
I must have slept pretty sound and pretty long. All of a sudden I waked
up with a start, and almost choking, for the place was smoky. I barked
and no one answered.
I ran out on to the landing, and the whole house was full of smoke. The
house was on fire, and it looked like I was alone in it. I went down the
back stairway, which didn't seem so full of smoke, but the door that let
out on to the first-floor landing was locked, and I had to go back up
again.
By the time I got back up, the front stairway was a great deal fuller
of smoke, and I could see glints of flame winking through it way down
below. But it was my only way out of that place. On the top step I
stumbled over a gray wool bunch of something or other, and I picked it
up in my mouth. Thinks I, “That is Freckles's gray sweater, that he is
so stuck on. I might as well take it down to him.”
It wasn't so hard for a lively dog to get out of a place like that, I
thought. But I got kind of confused and excited, too. And it struck me
all of a sudden, by the time I was down to the second floor, that that
sweater weighed an awful lot.
1 dropped it on the second floor, and ran into one of the front bedrooms
and looked out.
By jings! the whole town was in the front yard and in the street.
And in the midst of the crowd was Mrs. Wilkins, carrying on like mad.
“My baby!” she yelled. “Save my baby. Let me loose! I'm going after my
baby!”
I stood up on my hind legs, with my head just out of that bedroom
window, and the flame and smoke licking up all around me, and barked.
“My doggie! My doggie!” yells Freckles, who was in the crowd, “I must
save my doggie!” And he made a run for the house, but someone grabbed
him and slung him back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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