Mrs. Gorman stepped to the window, then she joined her hands, cast a pleading look toward the ceiling and said, “Oh, Lord—they’re coming.”
Oscar told me afterward that the sight of those two confused, staggering young fellows zig-zagging across the field made him grin. They had not recovered from the effects of their rejoicing, but something in their poor brains had warned them to set out in chase of their lost property.
They were following the tracks of the chain that had dragged on the earth, and every time they stopped to look, they would fall down. Oscar said afterward that it was a dreadful thing to laugh at drunken men, but he couldn’t help shaking his sides over their antics.
Soon they got up to the house, and after cutting the telephone wire, staggered through the garden to the front door. After they had pounded a short time, Mrs. Gorman went to the little hall window, and without raising it, looked out at them.
They called her some very fancy names, and ordered her to let them in.
“What for?” she screamed through the glass. “You’re not in a state to make calls. Go home.”
“Give us our dog,” they yelled, pounding on the door with their fists.
“I haven’t got your dog,” the widow called back to them. Then she realised she had made a mistake. She didn’t want them to know she had discovered I was the Granton dog.
“That good dog doesn’t want to live with you,” she shouted. “He scratched his way out. You’d better let me keep him.”