“If he belongs anywhere around Milton, somebody will surely know about him,” said the boy. “I’ll make inquiries. Wherever he comes from, he must be well known in that locality.”
“Why so?” demanded Agnes.
“Because of what it says on his collar,” laughed Neale O’Neil.
“Because of what it doesn’t say, I guess,” explained Ruth, seeing her sister’s puzzled face. “There is no name of owner, or license number. Do you see?”
“It—it would be an insult to license a dog like Tom Jonah,” sputtered Tess. “Just—just like a tag on an automobile!”
“Yo’ right, honey,” chuckled Uncle Rufus. “He done seem like folkses—don’ he? I’se gwine tuh give him a reg’lar barf an’ cure up dem sore feetses ob his. He’ll be anudder dawg—sho’ will!”
The old man took Tom Jonah to the grass plot near the garden hydrant, and soaped him well—with the “insect-suicide” soap Dot had talked about—and afterward washed him down with the hose. Tom Jonah stood for it all; he had evidently been used to having his toilet attended to.
When the girls came home from Sunday school, they found him lying on the porch, all warm and dried and his hair “fluffy.” They had asked everybody they met—almost—about Tom Jonah; but not a soul knew anything regarding him.
“He’s going to be ours for keeps! He’s going to be ours for keeps!” sang Tess, with delight.
Sandyface’s earlier family—Spotty, Almira, Bungle and Popocatepetl—had taken a good look at the big dog, and then backed away with swelling tails and muffled objections. But the old cat had to attend to the four little blind mites behind the kitchen range, so she had grown familiar enough with Tom Jonah to pass him on her way to and from the kitchen door.