“Oh, that is sweet of you!” Dorothy cried delightedly, and the Doctor’s chuckle echoed her pleasure.
“The dog’s got a fine head—a very fine head, indeed. If anybody advertises for him, or comes to claim him, I’ll take pleasure in buying the puppy for you.”
“Why, you’re nicer every minute,” declared Dorothy. “Isn’t he, Professor?”
The pup yawned with great indifference, which set all three of them laughing. His mistress put him in his blanket where he promptly curled up and fell into slumber once more.
“I sadly fear,” said Doctor Winn, as he polished his pince-nez with a white silk handkerchief, “that you are a good deal of a flirt Janet. But inasmuch as I am old enough to be your grandfather, or great-grandfather, for that matter, you are pardoned with a reprimand.” He chuckled deep in his throat, a habit he had when pleased. “Now tell me, how you happened to find him out in the snow.”
Dorothy recounted the story in detail. When she came to the part about Gretchen’s fear of the wildcat and the fox, even Mrs. Lawson, who was none too sure she liked the turn things were taking, broke into a merry peal of laughter.
“Capital, capital!” Doctor Winn beamed. “I only wish I’d been there to see it. But why, may I ask, do you call him Professor?”
Dorothy explained about the dictionary and Gretchen’s idea of the pup’s resemblance to Dorothea Gutmann’s fox terrier.
“Better and better,” exclaimed the Doctor. “This is the jolliest tea we’ve had in this house for ages. We need young people around us to be really happy. You and I and Martin, Laura, have been working too hard of late. ‘All work and no play’—We’ve been bothering too much about things scientific, and neglecting things personal. Well now, we can rest a while, and become human beings again.”
Mrs. Lawson leaned forward eagerly. “Then, the formula is complete?” she asked in a low voice, in which Dorothy detected the barely controlled tremor of excitement.