“Now, Dumps, come here and let’s be friends. Who do you think is coming to stay with us—to stay altogether? You’ll never guess. Your old friend and first master, little Slidder, no less. Think of that!”
Dumps wagged his tail vigorously; whether at the news, or because of pleasure at my brushing the hair off his soft brown eyes, and looking into them, I cannot tell.
“Yes,” I continued, “it’s quite true. This fire will apparently be the making of little Slidder, as well as you and me, for we are all going to live and work together. Isn’t that nice? Evidently Dr McTougall is a trump, and so is his friend Dobson, who puts this fine mansion at his disposal until another home can be got ready for us.”
I was interrupted at this point by an uproarious burst of laughter from the doctor himself, who had entered by the open door unobserved by me. I joined in the laugh against myself, but blushed, nevertheless, for man does not like, as a rule, to be caught talking earnestly either to himself or to a dumb creature.
“Why, Mellon,” he said, sitting down beside me, and patting my dog, “I imagined from your tones, as I entered, that you were having some serious conversation with my wife.”
“No; Mrs McTougall has not yet returned from her drive. I was merely having a chat with Dumps. I had of late, in my lodgings, got into a way of thinking aloud, as it were, while talking to my dog. I suppose it was with an unconscious desire to break the silence of my room.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the doctor, with a touch of sympathy in his tone. “You must have been rather lonely in that attic of yours. And yet do you know, I sometimes sigh for the quiet of such an attic! Perhaps when you’ve been some months under the same roof with these miniature thunderstorms, Jack, Harry, Job, Jenny, and Dolly, you’ll long to go back to the attic.”
A tremendous thump on the floor overhead, followed by a wild uproar, sent the doctor upstairs—three steps at a stride. I sat prudently still till he returned, which he did in a few minutes, laughing.
“What d’you think it was?” he cried, panting. “Only my Dolly tumbling off the chest of drawers. My babes have many pleasant little games. Among others, cutting off the heads of dreadful traitors is a great favourite. They roll up a sheet into a ball for the head. Then each of them is led in turn to the scaffold, which is the top of a chest of drawers. One holds the ball against the criminal’s shoulders, another cuts it off with a wooden knife, a basket receives it below, then one of them takes it out, and, holding it aloft shouts ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ It seems that four criminals had been safely decapitated, and Dolly was being led to the fatal block, when she slipped her foot and fell to the ground, overturning Harry and a chair in her descent. That was all.”
“Not hurt, I hope?”