Little Sally Waters

by Ethel Calvert Phillips

But this is how it happened. To begin with, as they sat on the porch steps, Andy told Tippy why he had had a tantrum. And when Tip knew all about it, he wagged his tail and looked up into Andy’s face as if he would say that really you could scarcely blame Andy after all.

‘We came here to the country yesterday,’ said Andy, gently pulling Tip’s ears, ‘and I have a pail and shovel, and a bathing-suit, blue-and-white. I am all ready to play and dig in the sand. Mother and I were going down to the beach this morning the very first thing. But when I woke up I was covered with little red spots like this.’

Sure enough, there were the red spots, ever so many of them. Andy eyed them rather proudly and then went on with his story.

‘So Mother sent for the doctor, and when he said I had chicken-pox I just couldn’t stand going to bed now when I want to play. But if I don’t have to go to bed you and I can have some fun together, Bounce. I am going to call you Bounce. Perhaps we can go to the beach. Let’s go and ask Mother. Here, Bounce! Here, Bounce!’

And Andy and Tip, who didn’t at all mind being called Bounce, ran into the house to see whether they might not go down to the beach.

But though Andy need not go to bed and might play as much as he wished all day long he was not permitted to leave his own front yard. And as Andy would not allow Tippy out of his sight, it followed that Tippy was forced to stay inside the front yard, too. There was a tall, white fence all about the yard, over which Tippy could not jump, and at night he slept on the floor beside Andy’s bed.

He did not forget Sally. Oh, no! But the days slipped by as he romped and played and tumbled about with Andy, who would never have known that he was ill with chicken-pox if it had not been for the little red spots.

But now the red spots were disappearing fast, and one morning Andy’s mother, whose name was Mrs. Thomas, said that Andy might leave the front yard and go down into the town with her if he liked.

‘And Bounce? Bounce must come, too.’

So Bounce, or Tippy, was fastened to a string, and pulling and tugging in a way that made Andy run far more than he walked, the little brown dog led the way down into the town. For as soon as Tippy had walked along a street or two, he knew where he was and felt at home. And the farther they walked and the nearer they drew to Sally’s house, the more at home he felt. Until, as Andy and his mother and Tip were walking through a quiet, narrow little street, Tip began to run and jump and pull at his string so that Andy could scarcely hold him back. Then, suddenly, he halted, with a jerk, before a gray house that stood on the side of the hill in the midst of a gay flower garden, and opened his mouth in the loudest, sharpest bark that Andy had ever heard him give.