CHAPTER V
JACK AND JILL WADDLES
This is a chronicle of the doings of Jack and Jill the twins, pups of Waddles and Happy of Happy Hall, who, from the age of twelve days when they completely opened their eyes on the world, thought for a time, until they met experience, that it was made exclusively for themselves, according to the thinking of many two-footed children.
After the going away of Lumberlegs, Waddles’s youth came back to him. He went off on long excursions with his neighbours, bayed a juicy tenor in the quartet that led the Dogtown chorus in its practise on moonlight nights, and actually threw bones into the air and played with them as of old.
Not that he could turn as quickly, and his portliness got rather in the way as he tried to double on himself; but the spirit was there, which is the thing that counts.
Waddles, Mayor of Dogtown, had always been an important person, but Waddles, the married man, father of a family and master of a home consisting of three houses surrounded by a fine yard and equipped with porcelain-lined food dishes, hay pillows, and other luxuries, was of double dignity.
With the extra food supply necessary for more dogs, he was able to be a greater patron of the poor in the line of bones and left-over dog biscuit. Also it was not an unusual thing to see him piloting a tired and thirsty dog, who had been following a team bound for the market town, to the trough that caught the well drippings, and then to a particularly cool resting spot under the quince bushes; for this particular highway was a trying place for thirsty animals, as there was not a single spring or drinking-trough between the Hilltop Kennels and Happy Hall. Yet, in spite of all this outside notoriety, as far as his own particular family was concerned, he was tolerated, but that was about all.
Anne expected that he would be sad or resentful, as when Lumberlegs claimed affection that Waddles considered his own exclusive property. He was neither the one nor the other. The proverb, “Every dog has its day,” is evidently one of the recognized family dog laws. It was Mrs. Happy Waddles’s day just then, for was she not the mother of the twins?
It was to her apartments in the big kennel once owned by Lumberlegs that visitors went and gave ohs and ahs of admiration. Her ladyship had new milk and all the tidbits, and did not have to submit to a bath for several weeks lest she should be chilled.