I rose and obeyed. Shortly after, when the “peshous one” had been properly shod, and Marie was dressed for tea, we went forth to walk Dinah; but Marie, recalling the three handsome dolls sitting bolt upright in the parlor, suddenly commanded me to return and make faces at them, “real bad faces, too, for being so stiff and big they couldn’t cuddle.”
But I suggested that she should wait till the gas was burning, and then let the dolls see Dinah, and with malicious joy she waited. And so began the fellowship between those two. Straight into her warm and tender, little heart the vixen took her “peshous Dinah” and gave her a love that could not be shaken by a mother’s angry tears, a father’s bribery, or the contemptuous sneers of friends and neighbors—a love that lasted so long as Dinah’s self. The effect she produced on people at first sight was remarkable. There was Mr. Tyler, for instance; a good-looking man, very quiet, very gentle and very kind. He never drank, yet the first time he saw Dinah he thought he did, and he was afraid to kiss his wife, lest she should think so, too; and I saw him secretly touch Dinah once or twice, to make sure she was real.
Marie’s young uncle, too, he was preparing for college, and though he was gay and full of fun, his conduct was excellent, and he was very strict about Sunday observances, but when he met Dinah he exclaimed: “Well, I’ll be d—d!” Perhaps that was not Dinah’s fault. He might have been thinking of his future state, and had just arrived at that conclusion.
Perhaps the most disagreeable occurrence was when the minister, Presbyterian, called, and not having his glasses on, sat himself down heavily upon Dinah. He instantly sprang up to remove the foreign substance he felt beneath him, and meeting the malevolent eye of the “peshous one,” he exclaimed, in a startled tone: “God bless my soul!—er—er—I should say—what on earth?”
But with a bound, the vixen, Marie, was at his side, crying: “How dare you, you too fat, bad old man; you sat on my Dinah and swor’d, you did!”
With a crimson face he answered: “Oh, no; oh, no! my dear little child, you are mistaken. I——”
But Marie stamped her foot at him and cried: “You swor’d! you swor’d!” upon which tableau entered Mrs. Tyler.
Gradually, however, Dinah came to be accepted by the family, and it was surprising to see how useful she became to its various members. Mr. Tyler, who did a good deal of office work at home, used her almost continuously as a pen-wiper. Instead of having to pick up a tiny round of cloth and carefully fit the pen to a narrow fold, Dinah allowed a largeness and freedom of movement very pleasant to him. Just a swipe at her in almost any direction, and the pen was clean.
The young uncle, who delighted in the comfort of a rocking-chair, yet detested its movement, used Dinah as a sort of brake, placing her under the back of a rocker at just the right angle to prevent action, while many a time the somewhat flighty housemaid, having forgotten to dust the “what-not” (indispensable adjunct of the parlor of that date), would snatch up Dinah and dust all the shelves and their contents with her, fitting her arm or her leg into the depths of “To a Good Girl,” or “From Chelsia,” or “Friendship’s Offering”—these cups and mugs, with their roses and posies and fine gold lettering, being veritable dust traps, as were the sea shells, with the Lord’s Prayer cut on their surface, and the parian-marble Rebeccas standing by salt-cellar-like wells, and of such was the bric-a-brac of that day, you know—the day of wax things under glass shades.
The entire family used the back of Dinah’s head as a pin cushion, while again and again I have seen her act as an iron-holder, when a sash ribbon or bit of lace had to be pressed just there in the sitting-room.