_ PART TWO
CHAPTER IV
The following morning, "Oh, Gordon!" Lettice cried, "I like him ever so much; he played and played with me."
Gordon had gone to the post-office, and was descending the slope from the public road to his dwelling. He found Lettice sitting on the edge of the porch, and, panting vigorously, the dog extended before her, an expression of idiotic satisfaction on his shaggy face. They were, together, an epitome of extreme youth; and Gordon's discontent, revived from the night before, overflowed in facile displeasure.
"Don't you know better than to run him on a warm morning like this?" he complained; "as like as not now he'll take a fit; young dogs mustn't get their blood heated up."
The animation died from her countenance, leaving it almost sullen, her shoulders drooped dejectedly. "It seems nothing suits you," she observed; "you're cross when I don't like the dog and you're cross when I do. I can't satisfy you, anyhow."
"There's some difference in making over the dog and playing him out. Come here, General Jackson." The animal rose and yapped, backing playfully away. "Don't you hear me? Come right here." The dog, sensitive to the growing menace in the voice, moved still further away. "C'm here, damn you," Gordon shot out. The dog grew stubborn, and refused to move forward; and Gordon, his anger thoroughly aroused, picked up a large stone and threw it with all his force, missing General Jackson by a narrow margin.
"It seems to me," Lettice observed in a studiously detached voice, "I wouldn't throw stones at a dog I had paid two hundred dollars for."
Gordon was momentarily disconcerted. He had not intended to tell Lettice how much the General had cost. And yet, he reflected, since the village knew, with Sim Caley's wife in the house, it had been folly to hope to keep it from her.
"It's his pedigree," he explained lamely; "champion stock, imported." His temper again slowly got the better of his wisdom. "What if I did pay two hundred dollars for him?" he demanded; "it's harmless, ain't it? I'd a sight better do that than some other things I might mention."
"I only said," she repeated impersonally, "that I would not throw stones at a dog that had cost so much money."
"You're getting on the money now, are you? Going to start that song? That'll come natural to you. When I first married you I couldn't see how you were old Pompey's daughter, but I might have known it would come out. I might have known you weren't the daughter of the meanest man in Greenstream for nothing.... I suppose I'll hear about that money all the rest of my life."
"Perhaps I will die, and then you will have no bother."
"That's a nice way to talk; that makes me out a fine figure of a man ... with Mrs. Caley in the kitchen there, laying right over every word; the old vinegar bottle."
"Don't you say another word about Mrs. Caley," Lattice declared passionately; "she nursed my mother in her last sickness; and she took care of me for years, when there wasn't anybody else hardly knew if I was alive or not. If it wasn't for Mrs. Caley right now I guess I'd be in an early grave."
Gordon Makimmon stood silenced by the last outburst. The tall, meager figure of Mrs. Caley appeared upon the porch. She was clad in black calico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lips quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental, dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and, discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into the buggy.
"I thought I'd go over to the farm beyond the priest's," he answered Gordon's query; "Tol'able's an awful slack hand with cattle."
"Your wife ought to run that place; she'd walk those steers around on a snake fence."
Simeon Caley preserved a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean. He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in a countenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. It was said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned loose on the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther end of the valley.
His voice, like his eyes, was gentle. "Come right along, Gord; there's some draining you ought to see to. It's a nice drive, anyways." Gordon took the reins, slapping them on the rough, sturdy back of the horse, and they started up the precarious track to the road. General Jackson's head hung panting, wild-eyed, from the side of the vehicle. _