Part 26 (2/2)

One of the pretty girls laughed merrily, and sweeping from a silver plate a handful of cakes she thrust them into Peter's hands. ”Thank you,” he said simply. And then the children left with the dog gamboling in expectancy behind his small master. He knew well the cakes were for him.

Out in the grounds they met Graham. He had been to the stables to look at his pony, a new gift from his father. He paused astonished at sight of the children.

”Oh, Graham,” Suzanna cried at sight of him, ”your mother said we should see the gardener about this dog. She thought he'd like to have him.”

Graham, though startled, asked no questions.

”I guess it's David mother means,” he said. ”Wait here and I'll see if he's in the back garden.”

After Graham had gone Peter began to conjecture. ”If David won't take Jerry,” he said, ”what'll we do?”

”You'll have to take him out and lose him then,” said Maizie calmly.

Peter turned a considering eye upon her. He couldn't understand her.

Quite as a matter of course she suggested his taking the dog out on some prairie and turning it loose, to know hunger, and perhaps abuse. And yet, he had seen this same tender-hearted little Maizie crying because a spider had been swept down from the porch. No, in his boyish soul he decided that should he live a thousand years, he never would understand women with their inconsistencies and their peculiar viewpoints. Their tendernesses in one direction and their complacent cruelties in others.

”Let's go and sit on the steps of that cottage,” said Suzanna, pointing to a small house at the foot of the side garden. Maizie consented, but Peter preferred not to move. He wished to stay with his dog as long as possible. In the cottage might be a lady who would look with the same horror-stricken eyes upon his friend as had Mrs. Graham Woods Bartlett.

So Suzanna and Maizie left him with his dog. They had just ensconced themselves comfortably on the steps of the cottage when a distressing accent struck upon their ears, and simultaneously they turned in the direction of the sound. There on a tiny verandah, almost hidden behind a large fern growth, a little girl sat on a low chair crying softly and pathetically as though her small heart were broken. The children stood for a moment not knowing just what to do. Then Maizie, the same one, thought Peter satirically (he could see all that went on from his place beyond) who had suggested his losing his dog on a prairie, went to the pathetic figure and sitting beside it said in a tremulous low voice, full of sympathy and pity:

”What's the matter, little girl?”

The one thus addressed took her hands down from her face and looked around at her questioner. Her eyes were dark, with black lashes, and she had wonderful, curly hair. When she had finished looking at Maizie, which was a long moment, she put her hand behind her and produced a doll, sadly deficient as to features. Indeed, noseless, entirely, and with one eye gone. But in a very fever of love, she held it to her.

”Are you crying because your doll is broken?” asked Suzanna, now coming a little closer and standing straight and slim before the child.

”No, she's not broken,” said the little girl, ”but she's got the whooping cough and she keeps my father awake nights coughing.”

Suzanna instantly responded. ”Oh, that's too bad,” she said. ”Can't your mother fix her some flaxseed tea?”

Now down once more went the little girl's head upon her knee, and once more she was shaking with sobs. And at this moment young Graham returned and in his wake, David.

”David says,” began Graham cheerfully to Suzanna and Maizie, ”that he can find room for an extra dog, so you may leave yours. Where's your brother?”

”He is right over there,” pointed Maizie.

Then the gardener's glance fell upon the little girl, with her head bent as she still wept.

”She's crying awfully hard,” said Suzanna to the gardener. ”Do you know whose little girl she is?”

”She's mine,” said the man with a big world of tenderness in his voice.

”She's my little Daphne.”

”We thought she was crying because her doll was broken,” said Suzanna.

”Then she said it had the whooping cough and kept you awake all night and I asked her why her mother didn't make some flaxseed tea for it.”

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