“Now, I won’t have the creature attaching himself to you, Susan; he must learn to know that he is my dog!”
All the same, she never troubled about “her dog’s” food or sleeping quarters, and it was actually Susan who paid for his licence!
Now Susan was absent, also his good friend Aurea—and Joss was in confinement and deep disgrace; even before his friends’ departure he had been under a black cloud. His youthful spirits were uncontrollable; Joss had inherited the keen sporting instincts of his father, with the intellectual faculties of his accomplished mother, Colette, the poodle, and was both bold and inquisitive. Recently, the wretched animal had chewed off the tail of a magnificent tiger-skin, and concealed it, no one knew where! Miss Parrett hoped he had eaten it—as it was cured with arsenic—but more likely it had been stored in one of his many bone larders. He had poked his nose into a valuable jar, upset, and smashed it! he had come in all wet and muddy from a rat-hunting excursion in the river, and recouped his exhausted energies by a luxurious siesta in Miss Parrett’s own bed—and there was also a whispered and mysterious communication respecting the disappearance of a best and most expensive front, which had undoubtedly gone to the same limbo as the tiger’s tail!
“The brute is worse than a dozen monkeys,” declared his furious mistress, and he was accordingly bestowed on a farmer, who lived miles away near Catsfield, merely to return, accompanied by a piece of rope, the same evening. After this, the word “poison” was breathed; but luckily for Joss, Ottinge did not possess a chemist. Finally he was condemned to a fare of cold porridge, and solitary confinement in an empty stable—being suffered to roam loose at night after the house was closed.
The chauffeur and the brown dog had a good deal in common; they were both young and both captives in their way. Oh, those long, endless summer days, when the young man hung about the yard, with nothing to do, awaiting orders, unable to undertake any job in case the car should be wanted. When he called each morning for Miss Parrett’s instructions, and to ask if she would require the motor, the invariable reply was that “she would let him know later.”
The first time they met, Miss Parrett had taken a dislike to the chauffeur, and this dislike had recently been increased by an outrage of more recent date. She had seen Owen, her paid servant, in convulsions of laughter at her expense; yes, laughing exhaustively at his mistress! This was on the occasion of a ridiculous and distressing incident which had taken place one sultry afternoon in the garden. The Rector and his daughter were helping Susan to bud roses—a merry family party; the chauffeur was neatly trimming a box border, Hogben raking gravel, Miss Parrett herself, hooded like a hawk, was poking and prowling around. All at once she emerged from a tool-shed, bearing in triumph a black bottle, which she imprudently shook.
“I’d like to know what this is?” she demanded, in her shrillest pipe. The answer was instantaneous, for the liquor being “up,” there was a loud explosion, a wild shriek, and in a second Miss Parrett’s identity was completely effaced by the contents of a bottle of porter. The too inquisitive lady presented a truly humiliating spectacle. Hood, face, hands, gown, were covered with thick cream-coloured foam; it streamed and dripped, whilst she gasped and gurgled, and called upon “Susan!” and “Aurea!”
As the stuff was removed from her eyes by the latter—anxiously kind, but distinctly hysterical—almost the first object to catch the old lady’s eye was the chauffeur, at a little distance, who, such was his enjoyment of the scene, was actually holding his sides! He turned away hastily, but she could see that his shoulders were shaking, and told herself then that she would never forgive him. She bided her time to award suitable punishment for his scandalous behaviour—and the time arrived.
The malicious old woman enjoyed the conviction that she was holding this too independent chauffeur a prisoner on the premises, precisely as she kept the detestable Joss tied up in the stables. Joss rattled and dragged at his chain, and occasionally broke into melancholy howls, whilst the other paced to and fro in the red-tiled yard, thinking furiously and smoking many more cigarettes than were good for him.
Accustomed from childhood to a life of great activity, to be, perforce, incarcerated hour after hour, awaiting the good—or evil—pleasure of an old woman who was afraid to use her motor, exasperated Wynyard to the last degree. The car was ready, he was ready; usually about six o’clock Miss Parrett would trot out in her hood and announce in her bleating voice—