She still tramped about the near-by woods, but Miss Letty was often her companion. Also Miss Letty was timorous and made a point of insisting that Lumberlegs go with them. This he often did, and would either follow close or sit quite still on guard for any length of time; while Waddles and Happy would perhaps strike a trail and dash off in full cry, thereby disturbing the very things that Anne had come to watch. One day, after they had in this way scattered a quail brood that Anne had hunted from the time that Bobwhite announced his arrival, until she found the dear little chicks huddled in a leafy hollow among wild blackberry canes on the orchard edge, she felt provoked, and did not allow Waddles to go to walk with her for almost a week. “Mistress,” said he, his eyes growing deep and luminous with reproach, “I’ve always been with you until now; have you forgotten all those fine days before Tommy came, and there was only you and I? Don’t you remember I was with you when we met the miller’s bull, and he was so angry because, though he tolled the bell at Cock Robin’s funeral, they didn’t ask him to the feast, and how I followed you and Obi when you went for the wood-duck’s nest, though I was very sick, and that day when Ko-ko-ko-ho showed us the way to where the last rattlesnake was, and the night that we went up on the hill and I barked you awake just when you thought you were at the Forest Circus? What has happened, mistress? Are you tired of me, or can that Lumberlegs show you better paths than I do? Though you gave my tail and back legs half to Tommy when he was born, I’ve always used them to follow you and tell you I was glad just the same as ever, but now you love Lumberlegs best.”
“You dear, jealous old Waddlekins,” cried Anne, lifting his paws to her knee as of old so that he stood up and she could look in his face, “it’s nothing of the kind, only Miss Letty often comes with me, and she is used to the city, and she doesn’t care for those long ‘go over everything’ walks that we take, and she has read in the papers about tramps, and thinks Lumberlegs makes a splendid policeman. Besides, you know that you chased all those lovely little quails off our land just when they were getting big enough to have their pictures taken, and father had spent a lot of money for rubber tubing so he could work his camera from behind the old green apple tree. Now they are as shy as loons, and pop down in those wild roses when we are a whole field away and there isn’t even a big bush to hide behind.
“But never mind; I’m sorry, anyway, so touch noses and be friends, and to-morrow we will do the brook walk all by ourselves; for even if I do love Lumberlegs, it’s quite different.”
Instead of the usual dainty lick Waddles gave a half-suppressed growl. Anne dropped his paws, exclaiming in surprise: “To think of it, you growled at me when I was apologizing, the very first time in your life, too. I think you had better go over and rest in your kennel and think it over.”
Then she led him to his little house, snapped the chain in his collar, and walked away without once looking back, Lumberlegs leaving his stolen seat on the porch to follow her.
The truth about the growl was this: Waddles, dislodged by Lumberlegs from many of his nap nooks, had lately taken to lying in the grass or under bushes, which as he was elderly and the season very wet had given him rheumatism in his hind quarters. As Anne held up his paws the strain soon gave his back a miserable wrench. This caused the growl, and for thus being misunderstood to threaten his idol, Waddles was not only left behind, but dethroned and chained up in his rival’s presence, where he stood as if transfixed with a strange, drawn expression on his face, which when House People wear we know they are struggling to keep back tears.
If only Anne had then remembered what she had once said about disappointing him!
“He stood transfixed.”—p. 79.