“Yes'm. I bet I know what he was barkin' for, mamma.”
“Well?”
“You know what I think? I think he was kind of practisin'. I think he was practisin' how to bark at Mr. Parcher.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Baxter laughed. “Who ever could think of such a thing but you, Jane! You go to sleep and forget your nonsense!”
Nevertheless, Jane might almost have been gifted with clairvoyance, her preposterous idea came so close to the actual fact, for at that very moment William was barking. He was not barking directly at Mr. Parcher, it is true, but within a short distance of him and all too well within his hearing.
X
MR. PARCHER AND LOVE
Mr. Parcher, that unhappy gentleman, having been driven indoors from his own porch, had attempted to read Plutarch's Lives in the library, but, owing to the adjacency of the porch and the summer necessity for open windows, his escape spared only his eyes and not his suffering ears. The house was small, being but half of a double one, with small rooms, and the “parlor,” library, and dining-room all about equally exposed to the porch which ran along the side of the house. Mr. Parcher had no refuge except bed or the kitchen, and as he was troubled with chronic insomnia, and the cook had callers in the kitchen, his case was desperate. Most unfortunately, too, his reading-lamp, the only one in the house, was a fixture near a window, and just beyond that window sat Miss Pratt and William in sweet unconsciousness, while Miss Parcher entertained the overflow (consisting of Mr. Johnnie Watson) at the other end of the porch. Listening perforce to the conversation of the former couple though “conversation” is far from the expression later used by Mr. Parcher to describe what he heard—he found it impossible to sit still in his chair. He jerked and twitched with continually increasing restlessness; sometimes he gasped, and other times he moaned a little, and there were times when he muttered huskily.
“Oh, cute-ums!” came the silvery voice of Miss Pratt from the likewise silvery porch outside, underneath the summer moon. “Darlin' Flopit, look! Ickle boy Baxter goin' make imitations of darlin' Flopit again. See! Ickle boy Baxter puts head one side, then other side, just like darlin' Flopit. Then barks just like darlin' Flopit! Ladies and 'entlemen, imitations of darlin' Flopit by ickle boy Baxter.”