Miss Letty had taken great pains to keep out of Mr. Hugh’s way ever since the day that she first met him, when she heard him tell Tommy that he did not care for people who were “not useful”; and she never spoke of him except as the Great Bear, giving her aunt as her reason for the name, that when she looked out of her window at night at the stars, the constellation of the Great Bear (which is commonly called the Dipper) pointed its tail straight at Mr. Hugh’s house.
Everything had been quiet in Dogtown for some time. To the twins the novelty of the first hunting trips was wearing off, and Happy was resuming her usual habits,—going to walk with Anne and Waddles, sunning herself by the lilac bushes, and going nightly for the cows with Baldy. Now she had also her devoted son and servitor for a companion, Jill only going by fits and starts as suited her.
Monotony, however, is against the laws of Dogtown, and to prevent such a state of things, for nobody could see any other reason, one fine morning Miss Jill ran away.
At least Anne insisted that this was the case, though she could not prove it, and all that was really known was that when Baldy came for the milking pails at 6 A.M., he let Happy and the pups out of the nursery kennel; and that two hours later, when Anne went to feed them, Happy and Jack were waiting for her, but Jill was nowhere to be found. Moreover, when Anne whistled to Jack and said: “Where’s Jill? Find Jill!” instead of running about and giving funny shrill barks as usual until she answered, he paid no attention whatever.
Tommy suggested dolefully that the train might have killed her the same as it had Lily, but a careful search proved the contrary. Anne’s father was inclined to believe that she had been stolen by some one going to the market town with a milk or vegetable wagon, as many such passed by, and Jill had always made friends rather too easily. Miss Jule scoffed at this, saying that the people about were all too fond of dogs to allow such a theft to pass unpunished, and had followed up all dog stealing so swiftly that it had become almost an unknown crime.
Nevertheless, Miss Jule called up the sheriff, who was a lover of animals, and if he once saw a dog could recognize it again anywhere, and sent him scouring the countryside over, with no result, for Jill had vanished as completely as if she had taken wing.
“Of course I’m sorry,” said Anne, rather doubtfully to Miss Letty, who came down to offer sympathy; “but it isn’t as if Waddles, or even Jack, had gone. It is horrid to lose anything, and not to know what has become of poor Jill, for she may be hurt and lying somewhere sick and hungry, yet somehow I think that she didn’t care much for us, and that she has been planning to run away for some time.”
Miss Letty laughed at the notion, but Anne could not be shaken in her belief, and as there was nothing to do but wait, she waited. Meantime Happy Hall was quite a tranquil place, that is, on the rare days when neither Hamlet, Mr. Wolf, Quick, nor Tip came to visit Waddles, or Schnapps and Friday did not come to drink in the cow pond and meet Pinkie Scott’s fox terriers and Hans Sachs the dachshund on the war-path for rats behind the barn, Pinkie’s house being just above. When this happened, hard words were exchanged, for though Schnapps and Hans Sachs had been litter brothers, they were now in deadly feud, and of course Friday stood up for his chum.