“Oh, yeth!” she beamed at him. “My Uncle Harry’th got a bulldog. Hith name ith Eli. He liketh me.”
“Well, see here! Do you know how they make their tails short? A man bites ’em off! A fellow told me——”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She shuddered off the hassock, and rushed to her mother, gasping with horror.
“He thayth—he thayth—” words failed her. Broken sobs of “Eli! Oh, Eli!” filled the parlor. He was dazed, terrified. What had happened? What had he done? He was shuffled disgracefully from the room; apologies rose above her sobbing; the door closed behind Dicky and his mother.
Waves of rebuke rolled over his troubled spirit.
“Of all dreadful things to say to a poor, nervous little girl! I am too mortified. Richard, how do you learn such dreadful, dreadful things? It’s not true.”
“But, mamma, it is! It truly is. When they are little a man bites them off. Peter told me so. He puts his mouth right down——”
“Richard! Not another word! You are disgusting—perfectly disgusting. You trouble me very much.”
He retired to the clothes-tree in the side yard—there were no junipers there—and cursed his gods. To have made her cry! They thought he didn’t care, but oh, he did! He felt as if he had eaten a cold, gray stone that weighed down his stomach. The cat slunk by, but he threw nothing at her, and his neighbor’s St. Bernard puppy rolled inquiringly into the hedge, stuck there, and thrashed about helplessly, but he said nothing to frighten it. He thought of supper—they had spoken of cinnamon rolls and little yellow custards—but without the usual thrill. What was the matter? Was he going to be sick? There seemed no outlook to life—one thing was as good as another. He regarded going to bed with a dull acquiescence. As well that as anything else. It might be eight o’clock now for all he cared.
At night his mother came and sat for a moment on the side of the bed.