Old Mr. Wiley | Page 8

slightest attention, her husband turned to Miss
Beaver. As he did so, his staring eyes fell upon the ornate plush album
on the foot of the bed.
"How did that get here?" he demanded.
"Old Mr. Wiley brought it last night," admitted Miss Beaver, who was
feeling a trifle indignant at the old gentleman's defection.
"Old Mr. Wiley?" echoed Doctor Parris; stupidly, for him, Miss Beaver
thought. "Old Mr. Wiley?"
Frank Wiley III, his voice shaky, almost shouted at her.
"Do you mean to stand there and tell me that old Mr. Wiley was here
and brought that album?"
"I may as well tell you now as ever," snapped Miss Beaver and
deliberately turned her back upon Mrs. Frank, addressing herself
pointedly to Doctor Parris and the boy's father. "The old gentleman has
been in here every night to see Frank since I've been on duty and he
brought his little dog, and in my opinion his little dog should get the
credit of any improvement in the patient's condition."
Frank Wiley III picked up the bulky volume and began turning the
thick cardboard pages. His hands trembled; his face was queerly pasty.
"Turn the pages yourself, nurse, will you? See if you can find old Mr.
Wiley's picture."

Miss Beaver flipped the cardboard pages one after another until a
familiar face looked quizzically at her from a faded old daguerrotype.
She put on finger triumphantly on it.
"Here he is. This is old Mr. Wiley."
Mrs. Frank tiptoed nearer, took a single look, then with a shrill scream
fainted into Doctor Parris's convenient arms.
He muttered under his breath: "Superstitious damsel, this." Of Miss
Beaver he asked drily as he deposited his fair burden distastefully in the
big chair where the old gentleman had been sitting on his nightly visits:
"My dear Miss Beaver, are you very certain old Mr. Wiley has been
dropping in of nights?"
"Of course I am," declared Miss Beaver indignantly. "Is it so
astonishing that I recognize a face I've been seeing now for three
consecutive nights?"
"This is unbelievable," Frank Wiley III gasped.
Said the doctor gravely: "I ask you to be so very certain, nurse, because
the original of that picture has been dead for over fifteen years."
As those astonishing words fell on Miss Beaver's ears, she turned from
the doctor in sheer resentment.
"I don't care for practical jokes," said she with dignity to the boy's
apparently stupefied father, "and I must say I resent being made sport
of. I tell you plainly that old Mr. Wiley, the man in this picture," and
she tapped her finger impressively on the album page, "has spent a
couple of hours with Frankie and me every night since I've been on
duty here, and that's that!"
"Then that's settled," exclaimed the boy's father in a loud and
determined voice. "The dog stays."
As if miraculously restored, Mrs. Frank sprang to her feet.

"Is that so? Well, my dear husband, I'm afraid you're sadly mistaken.
The dog goes!" She gave her husband glare for glare, the rouge
standing in two round spots on her white face.
His look was one of active dislike. "We'll see about that, Florry. All of
you, come out into the hall. I want you to see something. Then let
anyone say Frank can't keep that dog!"
He beckoned imperatively and they followed down the great staircase
into the great hall below, where he stopped under a gilt-framed oil
portrait, life size. His finger pointed significantly.
* * * * *
Miss Beaver deciphered the small label at the front of the massive
frame. The painting was a portrait of Frank Wiley I, the founder of the
Wiley family. Her eyes rose higher to really look at the picture for the
first time since she had been in the house. It was the living likeness of
old Mr. Wiley and it almost seemed to her that, as she stared, one of his
eyelids quivered slightly as if in recognition of her belated admiration
for his diplomatic procedure. Beside him on the painted table one of his
fine hands lay negligently or rather, seemed to be lying higher than the
table proper, resting on ... was it just bare canvas?
"Look for yourself, Florry! Where is the fox-terrier that was painted
sitting on the table under Grandfather's hand?"
Young Mrs. Wiley stared pallidly at the likeness of the founder of the
Wiley clan. "White paint," she conjectured. Then, peering closer at the
canvas: "Somebody's scraped off the paint where the dog used to be."
Stiff and grim, his own man now, her husband faced her.
"Does my boy keep that dog?"
Behind them sounded a low exclamation. At the head of the staircase
stood young Frank, the puppy tucked securely under one arm.

"Nobody's