“Lobster salad and boiled custard! Not to include the ice-cream, even. A deadly combination; and you may have the satisfaction, if you enjoy it, of knowing that your thoughtless indulgence of his appetite will probably cost him his life. You may go. Send Jefferson for the dog doctor over on Penn Street. And, Mary, you carry him up to my room. Lift him gently, poor fellow! I’m afraid we’ll lose him this time.”
There was unaffected grief in the little lady’s tone, but Chloe was heard to mutter, composedly, as she departed kitchenward:
“A good riddance, I say. Time he died if his living’s going to make fools of human beings.”
Miss Armacost led the way, Mary carried the moaning poodle, and Molly’s curiosity, getting the better of all other considerations, forced her to bring up the rear.
There followed a dreadful half-hour, in which the girl forgot that she should be at home, because of the hurry and excitement in Miss Lucy’s upper sitting-room. By the end of that time Sir Christopher had ceased to suffer the ills of age and indiscretion, and lay quite still upon the silken cushions of his basket where his mistress had placed him.
When she found he was really dead the lady went away by herself, with her grief that was so real to her, yet might have seemed so foolish to others. Molly stole softly out of the house to tell the unusual happenings of her play hour to the sympathetic ears in Side Street. The short winter day came to a close. Darkness filled the back parlor where the forgotten Towsley had remained to enjoy his treat; and where, at length, the heat and quietude overcame him, so that he slipped from the hard stool to the soft carpet and fell asleep.
It was nine o’clock in the evening when Miss Armacost re-entered the room and touched another electric button. Instantly the place was flooded with light, and then she discovered the child.
“My, my! what a start that gave me! That boy here yet! What in the world shall I do with him? The threatened snow-storm has come and seems like the beginning of a blizzard. He didn’t belong to that Molly, she said, but of course he can’t stay here. I—I—Oh, dear! Troubles never come singly. I can’t keep him all night. I simply cannot. Yet I wouldn’t turn even a dog——”
When Miss Armacost’s thoughts reached this point she seemed to see Sir Christopher looking up into her face suggestively. He had been only a dog, to be sure, and this was only a street vagabond; yet the suggestion her mind had received really so staggered the mistress of the corner house on the Avenue that she suddenly sat down and clasped her hands in nervous trepidation.
“What—what—if I should—actually do it! What would the neighbors say!”