Elsie pondered over that letter—she was hurt—she was indignant—beaten—but there was one to whom she always could turn for comfort—one who always understood.
“Marcus,” she called, and to her feet came slithering a black dog, and he lay on his back before her, presenting all that was most vulnerable in his person to the tender ministrations of her wavering foot. One hind leg, to all appearances, was broken past mending. One front paw was badly damaged.
He was asking but the raking movement of his beloved physician’s well-booted foot and he should be healed. How long, how long, must he wait? There were other things to be done all on a summer’s day. There was a yellow cat—a stranger—not far off, that needed a lesson. There were more sparrows than there should be in a good woman’s garden. They needed a fright, that was all. Low-growing gooseberries there were within the reach of the shortest-legged and best-bred spaniel. He gave up the remote chance of healing by the scraping up and down of feet, and was off in the wake of the yellow cat, flushing sparrows as he went. The brambles did for him what his mistress would not. But brambles, being self-taught scratchers, have not the firmness of touch desirable; moreover, they don’t know when to leave go, or how.
“Marcus, do you hear me when I speak?” called Elsie.
“He’s that obstinate, that he be,” said the old gardener, who always came when any one was called, answering to any name if it were called loud enough.
He was deaf, so it was best to make sure: besides, his wife had lately died and he felt lonely if left entirely to vegetables.
“He just does it for the sake of contrariness,” he went on; “at his age he did ought to know better—but he don’t mean half he does—if you don’t take no notice of him he’ll come skeewithering back.”
And skeewithering back Marcus came, and resting his head on Elsie’s lap looked up into her face with that in his eyes that must forever disarm all feelings of anger, hatred, and malice against uncles—even uncles!
“Why, oh, why were you called Marcus?” she asked, and Marcus said, in his own particular manner of speech, that he had often asked himself the same question—and would now ask her.
Elsie remembered well the day Marcus had arrived—already named—in a basket. When she had opened the basket she had seen the smallest of black spaniels, and the blackest of black dogs, whose mother, judging by his neck, might have been a swan, and whose father, judging by the rest of him, the best spaniel ever bred. When she questioned the suitability of his name she discovered that he looked the wisest thing in the world—that a philosopher beside him must have lost in seriousness of demeanour. On his forehead there stood, strongly pronounced, the bumps of benevolence—so as Sibyl had named him Marcus, Marcus he remained.