master’s shadow, never losing sight of him from sunup to sundown, now forced to an ignominious cushion with his poor foot in a bandage. Stubby who lay on the foot of his bed tenderly guarded and pampered! Stubby should be avenged!
The dog stirred and whined in his sleep, and the boy tossed and planned, but finally decided that the offending garbage pail should be the medium through which vengeance should be done. The bone should return to the hand that flung it away. So Dick turned over and went to sleep like a cherub with Stubby’s well paw held tight in his own grubby one.
Quite early the next morning, while it was yet dark, came a sturdy shadow stealing across the backyards, across the hedges silently, skillfully, until he came within range of Harriet Granniss’s garbage pail. Carefully reconnoitering, he managed quite silently to find that bone and tie it to the doorknob. Then with a noisy clatter he flung the cover of the pail to the brick pavement, and lifting the pail from its high hook where dogs could not possibly maraud it, he sloshed the contents thoroughly and pervasively across the neat gray floor of the back porch and dropped the pail down the steps with a bum and a bang. Harriet Granniss’s head in curlers came forth impressively, but Dicky was far and away down toward the station after his early morning papers by that time, and Harriet’s demands to know who was there rang on empty air.
It was still too dark for Harriet Granniss to see the havoc wrought, so she withdrew her head and slammed down the window when she discovered her efforts were futile, with the conviction that she had frightened the intruder away. But when at six o’clock she descended the stairs and noisily began her preparations for a virtuous breakfast, she opened the back door to take in the milk, and the whole devastated porch was revealed.
The view of Harriet Granniss’s face when she first saw it resembled a large black storm at sea with the lightning playing over it. The blackness lasted through the breakfast hour, which began on the usual dot, in spite of the fact that both back porch and garbage pail had been duly scrubbed and were gleaming in their usual freshness. Disapproval sat heavily upon her moist, unhappy countenance, and Emily Dillon was made somehow to feel as if she were the cause of whatever trouble there was.
Harriet announced the distress toward the close of the meal with her usual fine sarcasm: “Well, we’re beginning to get the benefit of your philanthropy at last, Emily.”
Emily lifted sweet, dreamy eyes from a plate that was almost as well filled with creamed codfish and potatoes as when it was first passed to her, and smiled pleasantly: “Yes? How is that?”
It was one of Harriet Granniss’s grievances that Emily never called her by her first name. She always avoided calling her at all.
She waited until she had poured Emily’s coffee before she answered. She considered it one of her prerogatives to pour the coffee and sit in the seat of mistress, and Emily quickly let her do as she pleased.
“You would buy morning papers of that little rat of a boy what lives up the street. Smalley, the name is. His mother is that washed-out piece that goes by here Sundays in purple. Well, you ought to have been down here this
morning
“—Harriet spoke as if it were now nearly noon, although it had but just struck eight—“you would have seen how much gratitude the little beast has. He emptied the garbage pail all over the back porch, and it was filthy! And there was a great big bone tied to the doorknob.”
“A bone?” questioned Emily. “Whose bone?”
“Well, I’m sure I didn’t stop to identify the bone,” snapped Harriet. “I had enough to do to get the mess cleared up before the grocery man came. It wasn’t
my
bone, I’m sure of that! It may have been yours, of course, if you find one missing.”
Harriet considered this grim humor.
“I
mean
,” said Emily again with a worried look,
The dog stirred and whined in his sleep, and the boy tossed and planned, but finally decided that the offending garbage pail should be the medium through which vengeance should be done. The bone should return to the hand that flung it away. So Dick turned over and went to sleep like a cherub with Stubby’s well paw held tight in his own grubby one.
Quite early the next morning, while it was yet dark, came a sturdy shadow stealing across the backyards, across the hedges silently, skillfully, until he came within range of Harriet Granniss’s garbage pail. Carefully reconnoitering, he managed quite silently to find that bone and tie it to the doorknob. Then with a noisy clatter he flung the cover of the pail to the brick pavement, and lifting the pail from its high hook where dogs could not possibly maraud it, he sloshed the contents thoroughly and pervasively across the neat gray floor of the back porch and dropped the pail down the steps with a bum and a bang. Harriet Granniss’s head in curlers came forth impressively, but Dicky was far and away down toward the station after his early morning papers by that time, and Harriet’s demands to know who was there rang on empty air.
It was still too dark for Harriet Granniss to see the havoc wrought, so she withdrew her head and slammed down the window when she discovered her efforts were futile, with the conviction that she had frightened the intruder away. But when at six o’clock she descended the stairs and noisily began her preparations for a virtuous breakfast, she opened the back door to take in the milk, and the whole devastated porch was revealed.
The view of Harriet Granniss’s face when she first saw it resembled a large black storm at sea with the lightning playing over it. The blackness lasted through the breakfast hour, which began on the usual dot, in spite of the fact that both back porch and garbage pail had been duly scrubbed and were gleaming in their usual freshness. Disapproval sat heavily upon her moist, unhappy countenance, and Emily Dillon was made somehow to feel as if she were the cause of whatever trouble there was.
Harriet announced the distress toward the close of the meal with her usual fine sarcasm: “Well, we’re beginning to get the benefit of your philanthropy at last, Emily.”
Emily lifted sweet, dreamy eyes from a plate that was almost as well filled with creamed codfish and potatoes as when it was first passed to her, and smiled pleasantly: “Yes? How is that?”
It was one of Harriet Granniss’s grievances that Emily never called her by her first name. She always avoided calling her at all.
She waited until she had poured Emily’s coffee before she answered. She considered it one of her prerogatives to pour the coffee and sit in the seat of mistress, and Emily quickly let her do as she pleased.
“You would buy morning papers of that little rat of a boy what lives up the street. Smalley, the name is. His mother is that washed-out piece that goes by here Sundays in purple. Well, you ought to have been down here this
morning
“—Harriet spoke as if it were now nearly noon, although it had but just struck eight—“you would have seen how much gratitude the little beast has. He emptied the garbage pail all over the back porch, and it was filthy! And there was a great big bone tied to the doorknob.”
“A bone?” questioned Emily. “Whose bone?”
“Well, I’m sure I didn’t stop to identify the bone,” snapped Harriet. “I had enough to do to get the mess cleared up before the grocery man came. It wasn’t
my
bone, I’m sure of that! It may have been yours, of course, if you find one missing.”
Harriet considered this grim humor.
“I
mean
,” said Emily again with a worried look,
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