Bruce | Page 6

walk, for Lass and her new master, was no walk at all,
but a form of spiritual levitation. The half-mile pilgrimage consumed a
full hour of time. Not that Lass hung back or rebelled at her first taste
of collar and chain! These petty annoyances went unfelt in the wild joy
of a real walk, and in the infinitely deeper happiness of knowing her
friendship-famine was appeased at last.
The walk was long for various reasons--partly because, in her frisking
gyrations, Lass was forever tangling the new chain around Dick's thin
ankles; partly because he stopped, every block or so, to pat her or to
give her further lessons in the art of shaking hands. Also there were
admiring boy-acquaintances along the way, to whom the wonderful pet
must be exhibited.
At last Dick turned in at the gate of a cheap bungalow on a cheap
street--a bungalow with a discouraged geranium plot in its
pocket-handkerchief front yard, and with a double line of drying
clothes in the no larger space behind the house.
As Dick and his chum rounded the house, a woman emerged from
between the two lines of flapping sheets, whose hanging she had been
superintending. She stopped at sight of her son and the dog.
"Oh!" she commented with no enthusiasm at all. "Well, you did it, hey?
I was hoping you'd have better sense, and spend your check on a nice
new suit or something. He's kind of pretty, though," she went on, the
puppy's friendliness and beauty wringing the word of grudging praise
from her. "What kind of a dog is he? And you're sure he isn't savage,
aren't you?"
"Collie," answered Dick proudly. "Pedigreed collie! You bet she isn't
savage, either. Why, she's an angel. She minds me already. See--shake
hands, Lass!" "Lass!" ejaculated Mrs. Hazen. "'SHE!' Dick, you don't
mean to tell me you've gone and bought yourself a--a FEMALE dog?"

The woman spoke in the tone of horrified contempt that might well
have been hers had she found a rattlesnake and a brace of toads in her
son's pocket. And she lowered her voice, as is the manner of her kind
when forced to speak of the unspeakable. She moved back from the
puppy's politely out-thrust forepaw as from the passing of a garbage
cart.
"A female dog!" she reiterated. "Well, of all the chuckle-heads! A nasty
FEMALE dog, with your birthday money!"
"She's not one bit nasty!" flamed Dick, burying the grubby fingers of
his right hand protectively in the fluffy mass of the puppy's half-grown
ruff. "She's the dandiest dog ever! She--"
"Don't talk back to me!" snapped Mrs. Hazen. "Here! Turn right around
and take her to the cheats who sold her to you. Tell them to keep her
and give you the good money you paid for her. Take her out of my yard
this minute! Quick!"
A hot mist of tears sprang into the boy's eyes. Lass, with the queer
intuition that tells a female collie when her master is unhappy, whined
softly and licked his clenched hand.
"I--aw, PLEASE, Ma!" he begged chokingly. "PLEASE! It's--it's my
birthday, and everything. Please let me keep her. I--I love her better
than 'most anything there is. Can't I please keep her? Please!"
"You heard what I said," returned his mother curtly.
The washerwoman, who one day a week lightened Mrs. Hazen's
household labors, waddled into view from behind the billows of
wind-swirled clothes. She was an excellent person, and was built for
endurance rather than for speed. At sight of Lass she paused in real
interest.
"My!" she exclaimed with flattering approval. "So you got your dog,
did you? You didn't waste no time. And he's sure a handsome little
critter. Whatcher goin' to call him?"

"It's not a him, Irene," contradicted Mrs. Hazen, with another modest
lowering of her strong voice. "It's a HER. And I'm sending Dick back
with her, to where she came from. I've got my opinion of people who
will take advantage of a child's ignorance, by palming off a horrid
female dog on him, too. Take her away, Dick. I won't have her here
another minute. You hear me?"
"Please, Ma!" stammered Dick, battling with his desire to cry. "Aw,
PLEASE! I--I--"
"Your ma's right, Dick," chimed in the washerwoman, her first
interested glance at the puppy changing to one of refined and lofty
scorn. "Take her back. You don't want any female dogs around. No
nice folks do."
"Why not?" demanded the boy in sudden hopeless anger as he pressed
lovingly the nose Lass thrust so comfortingly into his hand. "WHY
don't we want a female dog around? Folks have female cats around
them, and female women. Why isn't a female dog--"
"That will do, Dick!" broke in his shocked mother. "Take her