Old Mr. Wiley | Page 8

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 going to take away my little dog that Great-grandfather Wiley brought me," cried the lad stoutly, black eyes flashing, thin face determined and unyielding.
"Don't let that dog come near me!" screamed Mrs. Frank and went into a genuine attack of hysteria. "He isn't real!"
Doctor Parris exchanged a look with Miss Beaver, whose face was pale but contented.
"I always knew you were psychic," he whispered, brows drawn into a puzzled scowl. "That's how the old gentleman, God rest his wilful soul, could get through."
"I wondered that he never spoke a single word! Now that it's over, I think I'm going to faint," decided Miss Beaver shakily.
"Nonsense," snapped the doctor with scant courtesy. "But she is well scared, thank God. I hardly think she will interfere much in future with young Frank. And by the looks of him, the boy's father has had his backbone stiffened considerably."
"That painted dog?" whispered Miss Beaver's tremulous lips.
"Eh? Yes. Ah, yes, the dog," murmured the doctor, too casually.
"You--you--dared!" uttered Miss Beaver