Baldy was also resigned and spoke his mind freely, much to Tommy’s chagrin.
As for Dogtown, it was jubilant to the barking point, especially among the lower classes, consisting of those dogs who, being in reduced circumstances, had been used to come shrinking and timid between dusk and dawn for castaway bones or swill-pail dainties.
Waddles was liberal minded upon such matters—as liberal as the law allows. Dog law says that no dog shall dig up a bone that another has buried; but all bones that lie abandoned and uncovered are public property and fair eating.
Waddles, being affluent, never ate swill, and only buried special bones to ripen, casting others about at random, often with scraps of flesh ungnawed; for this he was regarded in Dogtown as the people’s friend.
Lily, in coming, stopped this patronage. She had known want herself, in the days when she tramped with gypsies, so she ranged about, industriously burying everything she found for possible future use, and kept such a strict watch on all the outbuildings that the most ravenous cur dared not steal a lap of sour milk from the pig’s trough for fear of seeing those wide jaws gnashing in front of him; for Lily had the one bad trait of her race: she laid hold without warning.
So after all it was only Tommy who grieved for Lily. To him she stood for property rights, strength, and friendship, and for a time he was inconsolable.
“Let’s come home and see the twins have their supper; it won’t do any good for you to stay here and cry. Your eyes are swelled up like a frog’s, now,” said Anne, trying to lead Tommy away after Baldy and his shovel had disappeared.
“Supposin’ it was Waddles was dead, would you stop cryin’—the very same day—even if you were frogs?”
“Waddles! why that is entirely different; he is a person. There is no other dog like him,” and then Anne sat down suddenly on the tumble-down stone fence in sheer amazement at the possibility of mischance overtaking her little friend.