“Ting, ting, ting, bur-r-r,” said the telephone bell by the door, Waddles jumped up bristling, and barked his yap, yap, “treed-cat” bark at it; he always regarded the telephone as a personal insult, and as he did not quite fathom its workings or understand a voice unattached to a person he was not a little afraid of it, a fact he managed to conceal by bluster.
Through it he heard his mistress’s voice when she was at Miss Jule’s and wanted to ask if she might stay to dinner or supper, but he could get no scent of her whereabouts. Also he could hear the master talking to the fishman, whose odour was oban and forbidden of good dogs, and was his chief enemy besides, having dared to flick his whip at him. Was it not aggravating to hear those rasping tones without having a chance to pretend to nip his heels or bark his bony horse into a gallop?
Now that there was no one at home to take down the magic tube that released the evil spirit, he could take his revenge and bark his mind, which he did until he was hoarse.
“Why didn’t I like it?” asked Happy, now also quite awake, and with great energy. “There was enough to eat, I suppose, but how, and when, and where? I should like you to tell me that first.”
As Waddles didn’t know, he could not tell, so Happy took the floor, or rather the bearskin, and began her story, occasionally punctuating it by pauses caused by stopping to give her paws an extra washing.
“Melody, my mother, was not born in a kennel, though after she had great sport and hunted a few years, she came to live at Hilltop. I was born there, and the difference between living in a kennel and running free begins even before your eyes are open.
“Of course you’ve looked into the kennel yard four acres big, inside the tall wire fence and seen the grass-run, and the swimming-pool, but have you ever been inside the long red house made into rooms with many windows and doors, and a little yard by each?”
“No,” said Waddles, “I’ve often tried, but some one always drove me away, though once, when I had stepped inside the door, I ran down a long hallway when a big black and white setter, who seemed to be all by himself in a small room, told me I’d best get out while I could, for maybe if I waited I couldn’t, and begged me to bring him a bone next time I came.”
“That was old Antonio, a boarder,” said Happy, looking into the fire as if she saw the past in it. “His master used to have a country house like this, and he raised Antonio from a pup, took him hunting every leaf fall, and let him lie on the hearth-rug winter nights, but when the master sold the house and went away, he sent Antonio to board at Hilltop until he should come back for him. He promised to come soon, but that was the summer that I was a pup, and Antonio is still waiting.