"FOR MAMMA'S SAKE."
A STORY OF NED AND HIS DOG.
BY MARY D. BRINE.
There was no mistake about it. Ned and his mother were very poor, and decidedly uncomfortable. Ned was so tired of living in one little room, where all day long mamma sat by the window and sewed till the day-light faded away; and sometimes, too, both he and mamma went to bed rather hungry, and when the little boy used to pat his mother's thin cheeks lovingly, after a sweet baby fashion he had, he could often feel the tears in her eyes, when it was too dark for his bright blue eyes to look upon her face. There was a cunning little dog, Fido, Ned's only playmate, which also lived with them in that small room, and his chief occupation was the constant wagging of a very bushy tail, and a readiness to accept the slightest invitation for a frolic from his small master.
As for Fido's meals, he had grown so used to circumstances that I don't believe he even remembered the taste of a good juicy bone such as he used to have in Ned's old home before the days of poverty came. Never mind what brought about a change of circumstances in the family, but the change had come sadly enough, and Ned and mamma had only the memory of the times gone by to comfort them. Fido had been a puppy in those days—they were only two years back, after all—and if dogs can remember, no doubt this doggie longed for the green fields and sunny lanes in the pretty country town where he and Ned ran races together, and never were hungry. The little boy was only six years old then, and now, on the day before my story begins, mamma had celebrated his eighth birthday by buying him a tiny sugar angel with gauze wings, which filled Ned with awe and delight. Eat it? No, not he! it was far too lovely for that; so he suspended the angelic toy by a string, and it soared above Ned's bed day and night, keeping sweet watch over all things.
But to Fido, the shaggy-haired, pug-nosed companion of his days, and sharer of his discomforts, Ned's heart clung with a love unbounded. He laughed, and Fido laughed, or, that is to say, Fido barked, which meant a laugh, of course. Ned cried, and Fido also wept, if a drooping of ears and tail, and a decided downcast expression of countenance, meant anything in the way of silent sympathy.
They were always together, and of the greatest comfort to one another, so that the "alley boys" (as they were called who lived by the tenement-house in which Ned lived) used to cry, jeeringly, whenever the little boy appeared for a breath of air, "How are you, Ned, and how is your dog?" or, to vary it occasionally, "How are you, doggie, and how is your Ned?"
I am telling this, so that my little readers can understand how hard it was for the little boy to do what he did, after a time, for mamma's sake.
It came about in this way. One afternoon late, when Mrs. Clarke had gone to carry home some work, and Ned and Fido were having a regular frolic on the floor, there came knocking at the door a Mrs. Malone, who collected the rent due from the several lodgers in the miserable building. With a frown on her face, when informed that Mrs. Clarke was out, the woman had bidden the boy tell his mother that "she'd wait no longer for the rent due her, and Mrs. Clarke might look out for herself."
Ned had cowered before her threatening face, but Fido, far from feeling any fear, had boldly barked at the intruder until he had nearly shaken his bushy tail from his small body. That made Mrs. Malone angry; and meeting Mrs. Clarke on the stairs, she repeated her threat to the weary, tired woman, who presently entered the room in tears.