The Story of Dago

by Annie F. Johnston

I determined to stop him in some way or another, so, not waiting to put down the gold dollar or the little carnelian ring, which were tightly clenched in one hand, I sprang down from the bureau. Running up the wire flower-stand below the cage, I shook my fist directly under his beak. It only made him noisier than ever, and he flew about the cage like something crazy.

"Be still, won't you? you silly thing!" I shrieked, and in my desperation I made a grab through the bars at his tail-feathers. A whole handful came out, and that seemed to make him wilder than before. He beat himself against the top of the cage and screamed so loud that I thought it would be better to leave before any one heard him and came in.

So I jumped across to the cabinet near the window, where the big blue dragon sat. Then I remembered the sugar-plums inside and stopped for just one taste. I lifted off the dragon's ugly head and was reaching my hand down inside for one of those delicious sweetmeats, when in walked Miss Patricia. My! I was scared! I hadn't expected her back so soon.

I dropped the dragon's old blue head on the floor and was out of the window like a shot. There was a cedar-tree reaching up past the window, and I ran out on one of the limbs and hid myself among its thick branches. I could see her but she couldn't see me. She walked all around the room, and looked at the wash-stand and the bureau and at Dick's tail-feathers scattered among the window-plants and then at the blue dragon's head, smashed all to bits on the floor. Then she picked up the locket, lying face downwards on the rug, and began searching for the other things that had been in the jewel-case. I suppose it was the carnelian ring and the gold dollar with the hole in it that she missed. I opened my hand, remembering that I had had them when I went to hush up that noisy mocking-bird. I must have dropped them when I jumped from the window into the cedar-tree. While I was hanging over the limb, peering down to see if I could catch a glimpse of them on the ground below, the housemaid, Nora, came into the room in answer to Miss Patricia's ring. A few minutes after, Doctor Tremont followed.

Nora and the doctor walked around and around the room, looking at everything, as Miss Patricia had done, and hunting for the things that were missing, but Miss Patricia sat down in a high-backed chair against the wall, and cried.

"I cannot stand it any longer," she sobbed. Her old face was quivering, there was a bright red spot on each cheek, and her side-curls were trembling with excitement. "I have put up with that little beast until I can endure it no longer. Patience has ceased to be a virtue. Either it must go, or I shall. Look at Dick! His heart is beating itself almost out of his poor little body, he is so frightened. And there's that china dragon, that has been a family heirloom for generations,—all broken! And my precious little keepsakes, that I have cherished since childhood, all scattered or lost! Oh, Tom, you do not know how cruelly it hurts me!"

I felt sorry, then. I wanted to cry out, as Stuart had done when he shot his great-great-grandfather's portrait, "Oh, Aunt Patricia, I'm so sorry! It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it, truly I didn't mean to!" But she couldn't understand monkey language, and man's speech has been denied us, so I only hugged the limb closer and watched in silence.

I stayed in that tree all day. The boys came home from school, and called and called me, but I kept as still as a mouse. It was not until long after dark that I crawled up the lightning-rod and slipped through the window into my room in the attic. Phil found me there the next morning when he began his search again. He squeezed me until I ached, he was so glad to see me. Then he and Elsie brought me my breakfast and sat on the floor, half crying as they watched me eat, for the order had gone forth that I must be sent away. The doctor could forgive his boys when they did wrong, but he couldn't make any allowance for me.

"I think it's too bad that we have to give up the very nicest pet we ever had, just because Aunt Patricia don't like him," exclaimed Phil, mournfully. "Dago didn't do much mischief that can't be mended. Carnelian rings are as cheap as anything. Nora said so. It would be easy enough to get her another one as good as the one Dago lost, and I'd be only too glad to give her my big silver dollar in place of the gold one. That would be better than the one she had before, for mine hasn't any hole in it. Dick's tail-feathers will grow out again, and everything could be fixed as good as new except the old blue dragon, and he was too ugly to make a fuss about, anyhow!"

"He always had good sugar-plums in him, though," said little Elsie, who had had her full share of them, and who had so many sweet memories of the dragon that she looked upon it as a friend.