“Oh, my!” said Euphemia, “I am so glad to hear that. I was afraid you never got in. But we saw the dog—is he as savage yet?”
“Oh, no!” said Pomona; “nothin’ like it.”
“Look here, Pomona,” said I, “I want to know about those taxes. When do they come into your story?”
“Pretty soon, sir,” said she, and she went on:
“After that, I know’d it wouldn’t do to have them two dogs so that they’d have to be tied up if they see each other. Just as like as not I’d want them both at once, and then they’d go to fighting, and leave me to settle with some bloodthirsty lightnin’-rodder. So, as I know’d if they once had a fair fight and found out which was master, they’d be good friends afterward, I thought the best thing to do would be to let ’em fight it out, when there was nothin’ else for ’em to do. So I fixed up things for the combat.”
“Why, Pomona!” cried Euphemia, “I didn’t think you were capable of such a cruel thing.”
“It looks that way, ma’am, but really it ain’t,” replied the girl. “It seemed to me as if it would be a mercy to both of ’em to have the thing settled. So I cleared away a place in front of the woodshed and unchained Lord Edward, and then I opened the kitchen door and called the bull. Out he came, with his teeth a-showin’, and his bloodshot eyes, and his crooked front legs. Like lightnin’ from the mount’in blast, he made one bounce for the big dog, and oh! what a fight there was! They rolled, they gnashed, they knocked over the wood-horse and sent chips a-flyin’ all ways at onst. I thought Lord Edward would whip in a minute or two; but he didn’t, for the bull stuck to him like a burr, and they was havin’ it, ground and lofty, when I hears some one run up behind me, an’ turnin’ quick, there was the ’piscopalian minister. ‘My! my! my!’ he hollers, ‘what an awful spectacle! Ain’t there no way of stoppin’ it?’ ‘No, sir,’ says I, and I told him how I didn’t want to stop it and the reason why. ‘Then,’ says he, ‘where’s your master?’ and I told him how you was away. ‘Isn’t there any man at all about?’ says he. ‘No,’ says I. ‘Then,’ says he, ‘if there’s nobody else to stop it, I must do it myself.’ An’ he took off his coat. ‘No,’ says I, ‘you keep back, sir. If there’s anybody to plunge into that erena, the blood be mine;’ an’ I put my hand, without thinkin’, ag’in his black shirt-bosom, to hold him back; but he didn’t notice, bein’ so excited. ‘Now,’ says I, jist wait one minute, and you’ll see that bull’s tail go between his legs. He’s weakenin’.’ An’ sure enough, Lord Edward got a good grab at him, and was a-shakin’ the very life out of him, when I run up and took Lord Edward by the collar. ‘Drop it!’ says I; an’ he dropped it, for he know’d he’d whipped, and he was pretty tired hisself. Then the bulldog, he trotted off with his tail a-hangin’ down. ‘Now, then,’ says I, ‘them dogs will be bosom friends forever after this.’ ‘Ah, me!’ says he, ‘I’m sorry indeed that your employer, for whom I’ve always had a great respect, should allow you to get into such bad habits.’
“That made me feel real bad, and I told him, mighty quick, that you was the last man in the world to let me do anything like that, and that if you’d a-been here you’d a-separated them dogs if they’d a-chawed your arms off; that you was very particular about such things, and that it would be a pity if he was to think you was a dog-fightin’ gentleman, when I’d often heard you say that, now you was fixed and settled, the one thing you would like most would be to be made a vestry-man.”
I sat up straight in my chair.
“Pomona!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t tell him that?”