“Why ain’t it? His money’s goin’ to pay for it, I reckon!”
“Oh, yes, that’s so,” admitted Carolyn May. “But Prince is going to live in it, and, you know, Prince is a friend of yours, Mr. Parlow.”
“Wal, no gittin’ around sich logic, I do allow,” grunted the old man, his eyes twinkling, and the flush of anger dying out of his cheeks. “I s’pose it is fur the dog. And the poor beast ain’t nobody’s enemy. Wal!”
So Prince had his warm house for the winter. Now Carolyn May put on her rubber boots and warm coat and hood and went out to release the dog for his morning run. His “morning scramble” would be the better term on this occasion. Why, at the first bound he was buried in a drift!
“Isn’t it lucky,” said Carolyn May to Aunty Rose, who stood in the doorway, “that Prince can smell his way around so well? If it wasn’t for his nose, he’d never be able to find his way out of those drifts. If I fell down in one, I know I wouldn’t be able to smell my way out again.”
But after Chet Gormley had come and dug the paths, and the ox-teams had come along with ploughs to break out the roads, she found it possible to go to school. She took Prince with her.
Prince had learned to behave very well at school now. He was not allowed in the schoolroom, but he remained on the porch or went back home, as he pleased. But he was always waiting at the door for his little mistress at recess and when the session closed.
At noon Uncle Joe came home, dragging a sled—a big roomy one, glistening with red paint. Just the nicest sled Carolyn May had ever seen, and one of the best the hardware dealer carried in stock.
“Oh, my, that’s lovely!” breathed the little girl in awed delight. “That’s ever so much better than any sled I ever had before. And Prince could draw me on it, if I only had a harness for him. He used to drag me in the park. Of course, if he saw a cat, I had to get off and hold him.”
Mr. Stagg, once started upon the path of good deeds, seemed to like it. At night he brought home certain straps and rivets, and in the kitchen, much to Aunty Rose’s amazement, he fitted Prince to a harness which the next day Carolyn May used on the dog, and Prince drew her very nicely along the beaten paths.