“Wait a minute and I’ll help,” he said as he passed a roll of bandage through the partly opened door.
“It’d only spoil your breakfast.” She was serious but practical. “I can do it. I’ve done it to lots of things. There’s peroxide on the mantel and he’s as patient as can be.”
When Archibald, shaven and dressed, left his room a half hour later, there were no signs of casualty and Pegeen was as serene as usual.
“He’s all fixed,” she said. “It wasn’t so terribly bad, but he couldn’t walk and of course I couldn’t leave him down there.”
“Of course not,” agreed Archibald.
But after breakfast, as she led him out to see the cripple, a shade of anxiety crossed her face.
“He isn’t a handsome dog,” she warned—“not exactly handsome, but he’ll be real cute when I’ve washed him—and he won’t be a bit of trouble to you. I’ll keep him in the shed and I’ll—”
“Piffle, Peg!” interrupted the man rudely. “We needed a dog.”
The dirty, shaggy little beast lying on a pile of burlap in the shed was not handsome. Pegeen had spoken within bounds. Mongrel was written large on him, but a strain of Airedale, albeit with a bar sinister across it, gave his ugliness a redeeming dash of distinction, and when two beseeching, friendly brown eyes met Archibald’s and the whole dog from sniffing nose to frantically wagging tail, wiggled propitiation, the man took the new-comer into the family with something like enthusiasm.
“He’s not handsome, Peg,” he agreed, “but he’s a jolly little chap. We’ll call him Wiggles.”