Chapter Twenty Three.
The sound of the gun, although it was discharged harmlessly into the unoffending ground, brought home to Peggy the full significance of the sentence that had been passed upon Diogenes, and the narrow shave by which she had prevented its being carried into effect. Diogenes too seemed to realise instinctively the seriousness of the occasion and the vastness of the service rendered him through Peggy’s intervention. He pushed his ungainly body against her skirt, instead of straining from the leash as was his practice, and when the report of the gun startled him, as it startled the girl and made her shiver, he lifted his soft eyes to her face wistfully, and pushed a cold nose into her hand for comfort, and licked the hand in humble testimony of his gratitude. Peggy looked down on him and her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Diogenes!” she cried. “Why did you do it?... Oh, Diogenes?”
Diogenes wagged his foolish tail and licked her hand again with yet more effusive demonstrations of affection. So much distressful weeping troubled him. Save when a child screamed at the sight of him, or a foolish person, like Eliza, his experience had not led him to expect tears. Yet to-day here were two people whom he had never seen cry before, lamenting tearfully in a manner which seemed somehow associated with himself. Diogenes could not understand it; and so he sidled consolingly against Peggy, to the incommoding of her progress as she hurried him away down the road.
Where she intended taking him, or what she purposed doing with him, were reflections which so far her mind had not burdened itself with; getting him away from the Hall and beyond the view of anyone connected with the place was sufficient concern for the moment.
When she had covered a distance of about half a mile the difficult question of the safe disposal of Diogenes arose, and, finding her unprepared with any solution of the problem, left her dismayed and perplexed, standing in the road with the subdued Diogenes beside her, at a complete loss what to do next. She looked at Diogenes, looked down the road, looked again at Diogenes, and frowned.
“Oh, you tiresome animal!” she exclaimed. “What am I to do now?”
One thing she dared not do, and that was take Diogenes back.
Peggy sat down in the hedge, risking chills and all the evils attendant on sitting upon damp ground, and drew Diogenes close to her, while she turned over in her busy brain the people she knew who would be most likely to assist her out of this difficulty. The obvious person, the one to whom she would have turned most readily to assist her with every assurance of his helpful sympathy but for that unfortunate interview in the conservatory, was Doctor Fairbridge. She felt incensed when she reflected upon that absurd scene and realised that the man had thereby made his friendship useless to her; that at this crisis when he could have served her she was debarred from seeking his aid, would have been unable to accept it had it been offered. Yet Doctor Fairbridge could have taken Diogenes, would have taken him, she, knew, and might have kept him successfully concealed at Rushleigh. Why, in the name of all that was annoying, had he been so inconsiderate as to propose to her?
“I don’t know what I am to do with you, Diogenes,” she said. “I don’t know where to hide you in a silly little place like this.”