Dogs Always Know

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Naturally, he did not speak again. But, as he sat facing her, and with his back to the room, he could not help his eyes resting upon her from time to time, and it was then that he had encountered that chilly look.

It was very pitiful, he thought, to see one as young as she behaving in such a way—really pitiful. Because she was not unattractive; even a casual glance had informed him of that.

Dark-browed, she was, and dark-eyed; but with hair that was bright and soft and almost blond, and a lovely rose color in her cheeks; the sort of girl a man would admire, if there had been the true womanly gentleness in her aspect. But after that look, it was impossible to admire; he could only pity.

Strange as it may seem, Miss Selby pitied him, and for a somewhat illogical reason. She saw pathos in the man because he was so large—so much too large. His great shoulders towered above the table; knives and forks looked like toys in his lean, brown hands, and his face was invisible, unless she raised her eyes, which she did not intend to do again.

She had seen him, though, as he crossed the room, and she might have thought him not bad looking, if he had not come to sit at her table. It was an honest and alert young face, healthily tanned, with warm, gray eyes, and a crest of wheat-colored hair above his forehead. But when he did sit down at her table, she immediately began her usual comparisons.

She imagined this young man in that sitting room in Boston, and she saw clearly how much too large he was. It was a small room, and her mother and her grandmother and her two aunts were all of a nice, neat, polite size.

“Like a bull in a china shop,” she thought, imagining him among them.

This was unjust. It is never fair to judge bulls by their possible behavior in china shops, anyhow; they seldom go into them, and when seen in the fields, or in bullfights, and so on, they are really noble animals.

But that is what she did think, and as soon as she could finish her dinner, she arose, with another of those almost imperceptible nods, and went away. She went up to her own room, and began to study shorthand.

She did this every evening, with great earnestness, for she was very anxious to get a better position than the one she now had, and she was so far advanced in her study that she could write absolutely anything in shorthand—if you gave her time enough. She could often read what she had written, too.