His companion, who was fresh from some nest of evil things in the city, called him a whole trainload of dreadful names. They lost their tempers, and fought. Was I sorry? I crouched under the bed and tried to discipline myself.
I murmured, “I am a respectable dog. I should grieve to see two young men so depraved. I should be sorry to see them giving each other blows—now Dud is down—his eye is laid open. I am terribly pained.”
I turned my head away, and thought I looked intensely sorry, but alas! an old tin pan that still had some shine on it stood leaning against the baseboard, and I saw reflected in it a distorted dog grin.
Well, Dud yelled so loudly, that Tike, as his chum is called, had to desist. The postman often passed about this time in the afternoon. They sat down, and glared at each other like two young tigers—no, not tigers, tigers are too noble. I can’t think of any animal bad enough to compare them with. Hyenas would have looked like gentlemen if set beside them.
Anyway, they sat and glowered, while Dud tied a wet towel to his injured eye, then they got more composed and Tike told his good news. I and Dud were to set off for California the following week. He had got the money.
Dud wanted to handle it, but Tike shook his head and exhibited just the corners of some bills sticking out of an inner pocket.
From composure, they passed to contentment. They were both frightfully tired of their long sojourn in the country. Listening to them, and consulting my own feelings, as I looked back on three weeks of being chained up, I concluded that the worst torture in the world for man or beast, is to be torn away from home and family and a happy active life, and to have nothing to do but think about yourself and your misery.
Finally Tike picked me up almost tenderly, told Dud, for the fiftieth time, what kind of a fool he was to beat a seven-thousand-dollar dog, and re-chained me to my iron bar.
Then they sat down again, and confronted each other. They were in high glee. They thought they saw several thousand dollars glittering alluringly ahead of them in far-off California. One thousand they would have to give to their friend—no, not their friend, they hadn’t any—to their fellow-plotter.
They just had to do something to celebrate. In New York, a dozen ways of jollification of their own sort would have been open to them—in this country place, there were but two things.