“Not tickly and bristly,” said Tiny with firmness, and she strutted up the walk for a pace or two, and then turned round to laugh over her shoulder.
“Good-night!” shouted her victim, shaking his fist after her.
The other children took a noisy farewell, and they all raced into the house, to give joint versions of the fairy tale, first to the parents in the drawing-room, and then to nurse in the nursery.
The Doctor went home also, with his poodle at his heels, but not by the way he came. He went out of his way, which was odd; but then the Doctor was “a little odd,” and moreover this was always the end of his evening walk. Through the church-yard, where spreading cedars and stiff yews rose from the velvet grass, and where among tombstones and crosses of various devices lay one of older and uglier date, by which he stayed. It was framed by a border of the most brilliant flowers, and it would seem as if the Doctor must have been the gardener, for he picked off some dead ones, and put them absently in his pocket. Then he looked round, as if to see that he was alone. Not a soul was to be seen, and the moonlight and shadow lay quietly side by side, as the dead do in their graves. The Doctor stooped down and took off his hat.
“Good-night, Marcia,” he said, in a low quiet voice. “Good-night, my darling!” The dog licked his hand, but there was no voice to answer, nor any that regarded.
Poor foolish Doctor! Most foolish to speak to the departed with his face earthwards. But we are weak mortals, the best of us; and this man (one of the very best) raised his head at last, and went home like a lonely owl with his face to the moon and the sky.
A BORROWED BROWNIE.
“I can’t imagine,” said the Rector, walking into the drawing-room the following afternoon; “I can’t imagine where Tiny is. I want her to drive to the other end of the parish with me.”
“There she comes,” said his wife, looking out of the window, “by the garden-gate, with a great basket; what has she been after?”
The Rector went out to discover, and met his daughter looking decidedly earthy, and seemingly much exhausted by the weight of a basketful of groundsel plants.