“It’s a mouse! It’s a mouse! Quick, Van! There it goes!”
The door of the closet where the pots and pans were kept stood ajar. In went the mouse; in went Van. The mouse went under a skillet, Van turned it over and jumped after; he chased it around a vinegar jug; he knocked over a pile of pans, and they fell with a terrible clatter; the mouse crept under one, and Van rooted up the whole of them, and sent them flying galley-west, while Mary took turns screaming and laughing.
Van hunted the mouse through the pantry, out into the kitchen again, and behind a broom in the corner. Bang! That was the broom falling. Pounce! That was Van, and Mrs. Mouse was no more.
By this time the whole Johns family was on the spot. They could not, unless they had been stone deaf, have escaped hearing the racket. Van was in his element. Not only had he brought down his first game, but he had an admiring audience, which he loved of all things. He swaggered around and tossed the mouse into the air, as if by so doing he could make them all understand just what a grand, brave dog he was. Lastly, he came proudly to lay his prize at the feet of his beloved mistress.
And Betsy spoiled his fun by taking the mouse away from him. It was all right for Van to kill a mouse, she argued, because mice are harmful, but one should not gloat over it. Van did not see things that way. He gave one grieved look at the unfeeling Betsy, jumped into his basket and sulked.
Then Betsy added insult to injury by pulling him out of the basket and carrying him upstairs. Aunt Kate, passing by, saw the child on the window seat. Very busy Betsy was with something, and that something was Van, who was wriggling tremendously.
“See here just a minute, Aunt Kate. Ai—aren’t they nice?”
She exhibited Van’s paws, with every nail scraped clean and white.
“He didn’t like it a mite, but he knew it had to be did, or he couldn’t be a gentleman. I washed ’em with a nail brush to get the mouse off.”
The catching of the mouse was the clinching nail in Dr. Johns’ respect for Van. He looked upon him now as a good and useful dog, and no longer as a mere plaything.