Peak and Prairie | Page 5

new friend on arriving home was to secure the
license upon him. He was collarless, and she was a good deal "put to it"
to supply the lack. At last she resolved to sacrifice her shawl-strap in
the emergency. She might miss it, to be sure, when she came to go
home, but then, she reflected, if she were once on her way home, she
would not care about any little inconvenience. So as soon as she and
David had had a good dinner, she got down the old strap, which had
hung on a certain nail for five long years, and taking a kitchen knife,
ruthlessly chopped it off to the right length. Then she bored a new hole
with her scissors for the tongue of the buckle to pass through, and,
going to Willie's tool box, found a short piece of wire with which--it
seemed but the other day--he had been tinkering something about the
house. With the wire she fastened the license securely to the collar. But
before David could be found worthy of such decoration, he was
subjected to a pretty severe bath in an old tub out in the back yard.
Poor David! This was a novel and painful dispensation, and he
submitted only under protest. But his new mistress was firm, and
arrayed in her oldest calico gown, with spectacles on her nose, she
applied herself, with the energy and determination of all her New
England grandmothers, to the task of scrubbing and soaping and
squeezing and combing the dirt out of the long, thick hair. Three tubs
of water were barely sufficient for the process, but finally David
emerged, subdued but clean, looking very limp and draggled, and so
much smaller because of his wet, close-clinging coat, that for a moment

Mrs. Nancy thought, with a pang, that she might have washed away a
part of the original dog. Later, however, when the sun had dried the
fluffy hair, and when she fastened the new collar about the neck of the
spotless animal, she let him lick her very face, so delighted were they
both with the result of her labors. The rest of the afternoon they passed
amicably together on the sunny porch. She would look up occasionally
from her sewing, and say, "Good doggy!" and David would
immediately wag his tail in delighted response. He was extremely
mannerly and appreciative of the slightest attention--always excepting
his enforced ablutions--and he seemed to approve of the kind eyes of
his little protectress as warmly as she approved of his cool leather nose
and speaking ears. As often as he moved, his license, hitting against the
collar buckle, made a safe, cheerful sound, and Mrs. Nancy felt quite
overcome with joy and gratitude at having been the chosen instrument
of his preservation. When she lighted the lamp in the evening and
began her regular game of backgammon, David curled himself up at
her feet in a most companionable manner, and pricked his ears with
interest at the fall of the dice.
But for her backgammon it would be difficult to imagine what Mrs.
Tarbell would have done with her evenings, for her eyes were not
strong enough for reading or sewing. She had got the habit of playing
backgammon with Willie, after he became too weak for more active
occupations, and they had kept the score in a little green blank-book.
After he died she had missed the game, and she had found it pleasant to
take it up again, and to play for both herself and Willie. The score, too,
had been continued in the old book. At the top of each new page she
wrote in her precise old-fashioned hand, "Mother," "Willie," and under
her name all the victories of the "whites" were scored, while those of
the "blacks" were still recorded to Willie's credit. After a while her
eyesight began to fail still more, and it became necessary to lift the dice
and examine them "near to." Then gradually she found that the black
checkers occasionally eluded her, and that she was straining her eyes in
her efforts to see them in the shadowy corners of the board. When at
last she found that by an oversight she had committed a flagrant
injustice to Willie's interests, she felt that something must be done.
Being fertile in resource, she presently bethought herself of the bright

colored wafers she had played with in her childhood, and to her joy she
found they were still to be bought. Having possessed herself of a box of
them, she proceeded to stick a glittering gilt star upon each side of each
checker, both black and white, after which the checkerboard took on a
showy theatrical appearance.
Mrs. Nancy rarely felt lonely when playing backgammon. The click of
the