Kindest woman in the world, she had seen with a strange un-Christian pleasure the dog's advance upon the black trousers. Then Mr. Jellybrand had been obviously afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she too had been afraid. He fancied, perhaps, that she was not mistress in her house, that she could be browbeaten by her sister and her nurse.
She smiled at him. “There's no reason to be afraid, Mr. Jellybrand. ... He's such a little dog.”
Then the dog smiled at her.
“Poor little thing,” she said. “He must have nearly died in the snow.”
Thus Miss Maple, bitterest of spinsters, influenced, all unwitting, the lives not only of a dog and a curate, but of the entire Cole family, and through them, of endless generations both of dogs and men as yet unborn. Miss Maple, sitting in her little yellow-curtained parlour drinking, in jaundiced contentment, her afternoon's cup of tea, was, of course, unaware of this. A good thing that she was unaware—she was quite conceited enough already.
IV
After that smiling judgment of Mrs. Cole's, affairs were quickly settled.
“Of course it can only be for the night, children. Father will arrange something in the morning. Poor little thing. Where did you find him?”
“We saw him from the window,” said Jeremy quickly, “and he was shivering like anything, so we called him in to warm him.”