The Judge somewhat helplessly took off his heavy coat and threw it over a chair. These children were turning his house upside down. That was a tramp coming downstairs—a tramp, pure and simple. But what was it—a snicker from young Jennie notified him that there was mystery afoot.
The supposed tramp was apparently youthful, but his rags were so clean and evidently so freshly made that the Judge became suspicious, and then that smooth, dark young chin and the red lips under the battered hat—surely they belonged to his grandson Titus. The old bathrobe, too, he thought he recognized as one of his own. What nonsense was this?
Bethany was laughing and clapping her hands, Dallas was giggling, and Brick was grinning more alarmingly than ever. “Come on, young sah—he’ll jus’ eat you up wid kindness—no feah in dat dress. Come on, come on—I’se loosin’ him,” and he let the dog go.
The creature with the hideous yellow spots actually ran toward Titus with his mouth open, but instead of devouring him he fawned on him, licked him, and soon was romping all over the hall with him.
“Titus,” said his grandfather, “stop this noise and explain your actions to me.”
Titus drew up in front of him, and, still holding the dog, who was playfully biting at his fingers, gave his old hat a blow that sent it spinning into a corner of the hall. Then he said breathlessly, “This is the queerest dog you ever saw, grandfather. He hates well dressed people. When he came he ripped down the seam of my trousers. Brick told me to go and dress up like a tramp, and see the difference. You know Brick has been a tramp’s boy.”
“A what?” inquired the Judge.
“A boy that goes about with a tramp—you’ve heard of them, grandfather. He waits on the tramp. Bylow went with him, and he hates well dressed people and nice houses.”
“Then his place is plainly not here,” observed the Judge, but under his breath, for fear of Bethany, who was now ecstatically smoothing the colored boy’s coat and sleeve.
“So your name is Brick,” he said, addressing the stranger.