It was always a puzzle to Tommy as to how the bag was seized without missing, and he often coaxed Anne to wait on the bridge until the train came, as there were little star-shaped openings in the iron work through which he could see.
This morning they had crossed, and then hearing the train turned back. Anne missing Lily looked up the hill for her, while Waddles, who, as a matter of course, was one of the party, trotted soberly along toward the village, where he would wait for his mistress upon the steps of either the market or grocery store, according as he understood her destination.
As the train reached the curve Tommy, whose eye was at the chink, gave a shriek and dashed himself at the barrier, wailing: “Lily, Lily, my Lily! She’ll be killed! O Anne, come quick!”
In reality, by this time Lily had crossed the rails and was quite safe, but her master’s cry made her turn to locate him. Whether she thought he was in pain or danger no one knows, but at that moment the train rounded the curve, whistling furiously. To the bewildered dog it must have been associated with her master’s scream or else sounded like a challenge, for like a flash she turned and charged the monstrous engine face to face. Tommy cast himself face downward on the roadway, his tears making mud of the dust. Anne caught hold of the railing and closed her eyes while the train thundered by underneath. Lily lay quite still high up on the bank; the engine had been quickly merciful.
That afternoon Baldy buried Lily in the corner of the orchard pasture where there was quite a company of pet animals, ranging from canaries, with school slates for headstones, to Brownie, the dear old pony that had belonged to Anne’s mother when a girl, and lived out a happy old age in that very pasture. One thing about pet animals is that their lives at best are so short, that we should treat them very kindly to make up for it.
Some of the neighbours laughed at what they called Unhappy Hall Cemetery, but Anne resented this with a good deal of spirit, saying, “I think that it is very mean to love an animal one day, when it is alive and can amuse you, and then throw it on the ash heap the next, just because it’s dead and can’t help itself.”
Tommy still crying, and remorseful at perhaps having caused Lily’s death by calling her at the wrong moment, insisted upon Miss Jule, and his father, and mother attending her funeral. Anne made a wreath of her best flowers, sacrificing four tea rosebuds and all of her mignonette and heliotrope, but Tommy would have none of it. Instead, he begged two beef bones from the cook, and tying them together crosswise with Anne’s best pink hair ribbon, which she had not the heart to deny him, put them on the middle of the mound, saying between sobs, “She—loved—bones—but—she didn’t like flowers—except to sleep on,” which was perfectly true, her favourite places for a siesta having been alternately the verbena, nasturtium, or lettuce bed.
Tommy’s father and mother were resigned, though they did not say much about it before the children. Complaints had begun to reach their ears that Lily not only felt it her duty to prevent strange people from coming near Tommy, but declined to let them pass by on the road unchallenged; and though they cherished all animals, they never allowed them to become a nuisance or bore those who cared less for them.