“If that’s all you’re waiting for,” he reassured her, “your long wait has been for nothing. No rescue will be needed. Mac will never touch the toad.”
“Does Mac know he won’t, though?”
“He does,” returned Vail, with finality. “Every normal outdoors dog, in early puppyhood, undertakes to bite or pick up a toad. And no dog ever tried it a second time. A zoölogy sharp told me why. He said toads’ skins are covered with some sort of chemical that would make alum taste like sugar, by contrast. It’s horrible stuff, and it’s the toad’s only weapon. No dog ever takes a second chance of torturing his tongue with it. That’s why Mac keeps his mouth shut, every time he noses at the ugly thing. The toad is quite as safe from him as Bernhardt was from dying on the elaborate Camille sofa. Mac knows it. And the toad knows it. If toads know anything. So nobody’s the worse for the drama.... One side there, Mac! You’re a pest.”
At the command, the collie gave over his harrowing assault, and wandered unconcernedly down the path ahead of them, his plumed tail gently waving, his tulip ears alert for some new adventure.
“Remember old Chubb Beasley?” asked Thaxton. “He lived down on the Lee Road.”
“I do, indeed,” she made answer. “He used to be pointed out to us by our Sunday School teacher as the one best local example of the awful effects of drink. What about him?”
“He owned Macduff’s sire,” said Vail. “A great big gold-and-white collie—a beauty. Chubb used to go down to Lee, regularly, every Saturday, to spend his pay at the speak-easy booze joint in the back of Clow’s grocery. The old chap used to say: ‘If I c’d afford it, I’d have a batting average of seven night a week. As it is, I gotta do my ’umble best of a Sat’dy night.’ And he did it. He came home late every Saturday evening, in a condition where the width of the road bothered him more than the length of it. And always, his loyal old collie was waiting at the gate to welcome him and guide his tangled footsteps up the walk to the house.”
“Good old collie!” she applauded. “But—”
“One night, Beasley got to Clow’s just as the saloon was raided by the Civic Reform Committee. He couldn’t get a drink, and he spent the evening wandering around looking for one. He had to go back home, for the first Saturday night in years, dead cold sober. The collie was waiting for him at the gate, as usual. Chubb strode up to him on steady unwavering legs and without either singing or crying. He didn’t even walk with an accent. The faithful dog sprang at the poor old cuss and bit him. Didn’t know his own master.”
Macduff’s histrionic display, and the story it had evoked, dispersed the sweet spell that had hung over the man and the maid, throughout their leisurely walk. Subconsciously, both felt and resented the glamour’s vanishing, without being able to realize their own emotions or to guess why the ramble had somehow lost its dreamy charm.