The lady didn’t take her son away, and a little later I heard her gushing to Mrs. Bonstone over the school.
“I never heard of anything like it,” she said. “The other day my husband brought home to dinner a distinguished Swiss scholar. When my Frankie heard our guest was from Switzerland, he ran to him, climbed on his knee, and asked him the most intelligent questions about his own country. He knew about the different cantons, the fine system of military service, the high mountains, the villages in the cup-like valleys, the big hotels, the peasants, the German-Swiss and the French-Swiss, and the coolness between them that the war has brought to a close, and he even yodelled for Monsieur de la Bontaine who is French-Swiss. The man was in an ecstasy. He pressed my child to his heart; he exclaimed, ‘Madame, I have not heard any grown man or woman talk in so picturesque a way about my country, since I came to America. It is a marvel. When did you have him in Switzerland?’
“I never had him there, I told him, and at first he could scarcely believe me. Frankie came to my assistance. ‘Mrs. Waverlee makes a country out in the garden,’ he said. ‘We have sand, and toy trees, and houses, and men and women, and stones, and we build mountains and make villages and forests, and then we go in the big hall, and see the moving pictures of it. Oh! it is great fun.’
“Monsieur de la Bontaine asked permission to visit the school, and he quite fell in love with Mrs. Waverlee. No, I shall not take Frankie away. I am going to give Mrs. Waverlee five hundred dollars to spend on further equipment for the school.”
Mrs. Bonstone was enchanted, and told her husband and my master how well their scheme was working out.
Master sighed. He was never satisfied with what he had done. He was always looking ahead. “Oh! for such a school for every young child in New York,” he said.
Now, to stop wandering, and go back to the day of our call—Gringo often says, “Boy, you are an A number one dog, but you reminisce too much”—Mrs. Waverlee put him up on the top of a box, then didn’t she exhaust the bulldog subject. She went away back to the days in old England, when cruel sports flourished. She told how men can take breeds of animals and birds and change them. The bulldog was inbred, until they got an animal perfectly adapted to the sport of bull-baiting.
She had some of the boys wheel out-of-doors an almost life-sized cow that is part of the school plant. She opened Gringo’s mouth, and the old fellow rolled his eyes kindly, while she showed the vise-like construction of his jaws. Then she asked him if he would make a spring at the cow, to show the children how the ancient bulldog used to leap at the bull’s head, and hold on by his teeth.
Gringo crooked his hind legs, gave one of his cat leaps, and landed on the cow’s upper lip. I don’t know what that old cow was made of, but there Gringo hung, and Mrs. Waverlee showed the children how his lay-back nose enabled him to breathe, while he retained his grip.