The Mayor of Dogtown.
Miss Jule’s dogs did not quite belong to Dogtown as citizens, because, being kennel dogs, they were not free to come and go and to express their opinions like the others. They were as boarding-school children, having fixed times for exercise and play, in comparison to those who, after school, run free.
There are some children who, though they may have good dispositions, can never be happy when cooped up and restrained. Tommy-Anne had been one of these, and so when, a year before, she had seen Cadence the beagle sitting looking mournfully through the slat door of her kennel, where she had been shut by her trainer for being heedless and unmanageable and not obeying his directions, her heart smote her and she felt so intimate a kinship with the little animal with the hopeless eyes, that she went to Miss Jule to ask the price of Cadence and if she might pay for her by instalments.
Miss Jule loved animals dearly, was tender-hearted, and had several pet dogs that were almost human; but the kennel dogs were raised for sale, and must be taught the various trades that, together with their pure breeding, made them valuable and able to earn their living.
No cruelty was allowed in the training-and-breaking-to-hunt process, but they simply must learn. Martin, Baldy’s brother, who not only broke colts under Miss Jule’s supervision, but trained both fox and beagle hounds, had said of gentle Cadence: “She’s no mortal use for hunting rabbits, she won’t mind if you chide her, unless your very eyes are upon her, she bolts at sight of a gun, won’t heel or gather with the others. We don’t need her for breeding, and I think she’d be better out of the way.”
While Miss Jule was thinking over the matter, Anne had hurried home and counted the contents of her money box replete with the results of Christmas, a birthday, copying manuscript for her father, and various dealings in rags, bottles, and old iron. She had been saving seriously to buy a camera holding glass plates that she could develop herself, and so be able to take pictures of her dear woods and flowers, the dogs, and, best of all, of her father and mother as they walked out in the garden together in their everyday clothes.
Thirty-seven dollars the money had footed up. The camera that she had chosen, together with the trays, drying rack, red lantern, some plates, etc., would be thirty dollars. Was it possible that Miss Jule would sell a thoroughbred rabbit hound for seven dollars?
Anne knew that she had often received a hundred dollars for a well-broken young hound; but poor Cadence did not seem to be broken at all, except in spirit, so that might make a difference; anyway, the camera could wait, for she kept seeing those appealing eyes, and had an instinctive feeling that Cadence’s fate was in her hands.
“Sell Cadence to you, so she needn’t be shut up so much? What will they say at home to another dog about? You know it was only last week that Tommy told me that Lumberlegs and Lily grinned at each other ‘awfully,’ and that Waddles would not let either of them go to walk with him. What will your mother say?”
Anne had not thought of this, to be sure; but no one at home had ever objected to any animals excepting white mice, and her mother had rebelled at having them kept in a bureau drawer, and finally put them under ban.