The Corner House Girls Under Canvas. Hill Grace Brooks
both girls.
“Oh!” gasped Dot, “he’s a trick dog.”
“He’s just what his collar says; he’s a gentleman,” sighed Tess, happily. “Oh! I hope his folks won’t ever come after him.”
Ruth had to come down for Tess and Dot or they would not have been bathed and dressed in time for breakfast. The smaller girls were very much taken with Tom Jonah.
They found that he had more accomplishments than “shaking hands.” When Agnes came down and heard about his first manifestation of education, she tried him at other “stunts.”
He sat up at the word of command. He would hold a bit of meat, or a sweet cracker, on his nose any length of time you might name, and never offer to eat it until you said, “Now, sir!” or something of the kind. Then Tom Jonah would jerk the tidbit into the air and catch it in his jaws as it came down.
And those jaws! Powerful indeed, despite some of the teeth having been broken and discolored by age. For Tom Jonah was no puppy. Uncle Rufus declared him to be at least twelve years old, and perhaps more than that.
But he had the physique of a lion – a great, broad chest, and muscles in his shoulders that slipped under the skin when he was in action like a tiger’s. Now that he was somewhat rested from the long journey he had evidently taken, he seemed a very powerful, healthy dog.
“And he would have eaten that tramp up, if he’d gotten hold of him,” Agnes declared, as they gathered at the breakfast table.
“Oh, no, Aggie; I don’t think Tom Jonah would really have bitten that Gypsy man,” Tess hastened to say. “But he might have grabbed his coat and held on.”
“With those jaws – I guess he would have held on,” sighed Agnes.
“Anyway,” said Dot, “he saved Ruthie’s hens. Didn’t he, Ruthie?”
“I’ll gladly pay his license fee if he wants to stay with us,” said Ruth, gaily.
The cornmeal muffins chanced to be a little over-baked that morning; at least, one panful was. Dot did not like “crusts”; she had been known to hide very hard ones under the edge of her plate.
She played with one of these muffin crusts more than she ate it, and Aunt Sarah Maltby (who was a very grim lady indeed with penetrating eyes and a habit of seldom speaking) had an accusing eye upon the little girl.
“Dorothy,” she said, suddenly, “you will see the time, I have no doubt, when you will be hungry for that crust. You had better eat it now like a nice girl.”
“Aunt Sarah, I really do not want it,” said Dot, gravely. “And – and if I don’t, do you think I shall really some day be hungry for just this pertic’lar crust?”
“You will. I expect nothing less,” snapped Aunt Sarah. “The Kenways was allus spend-thrifts. Why! when I was your age, Dorothy, I was glad to get dry bread to eat!”
Dot looked at her with serious interest. “You must have been awfully poor, Aunt Sarah,” she said, sympathetically. “You have a much better time living with us, don’t you?”
Ruth shook her head admonishingly at the smallest girl; but for once Aunt Sarah was rather nonplussed, and nobody heard her speak again before she went off to church.
Neale came over later, dressed for Sunday school, and he was as much interested in the new boarder at the Corner House as the girls themselves.
“If he belongs anywhere around Milton, somebody will surely know about him,” said the boy. “I’ll make inquiries. Wherever he comes from, he must be well known in that locality.”
“Why so?” demanded Agnes.
“Because of what it says on his collar,” laughed Neale O’Neil.
“Because of what it doesn’t say, I guess,” explained Ruth, seeing her sister’s puzzled face. “There is no name of owner, or license number. Do you see?”
“It – it would be an insult to license a dog like Tom Jonah,” sputtered Tess. “Just – just like a tag on an automobile!”
“Yo’ right, honey,” chuckled Uncle Rufus. “He done seem like folkses – don’ he? I’se gwine tuh give him a reg’lar barf an’ cure up dem sore feetses ob his. He’ll be anudder dawg – sho’ will!”
The old man took Tom Jonah to the grass plot near the garden hydrant, and soaped him well – with the “insect-suicide” soap Dot had talked about – and afterward washed him down with the hose. Tom Jonah stood for it all; he had evidently been used to having his toilet attended to.
When the girls came home from Sunday school, they found him lying on the porch, all warm and dried and his hair “fluffy.” They had asked everybody they met – almost – about Tom Jonah; but not a soul knew anything regarding him.
“He’s going to be ours for keeps! He’s going to be ours for keeps!” sang Tess, with delight.
Sandyface’s earlier family – Spotty, Almira, Bungle and Popocatepetl – had taken a good look at the big dog, and then backed away with swelling tails and muffled objections. But the old cat had to attend to the four little blind mites behind the kitchen range, so she had grown familiar enough with Tom Jonah to pass him on her way to and from the kitchen door.
He was too much of a gentleman, as his collar proclaimed, to pay her the least attention save for a friendly wag of his bushy tail. To the four half-grown cats he gave little heed. But Tess and Dot thought that he ought to become acquainted with the un-named kittens in the basket immediately.
“If they get used to him, you know,” said Tess, “they’ll all live together just like a ‘happy family.’”
“Like us?” suggested Dot, who did not quite understand the reference, having forgotten the particular cage thus labeled in the circus they had seen the previous summer.
“Why! of course like us!” laughed Tess, and Sandyface being away foraging for her brood, Tess seized the basket and carried it out on the porch, setting it down before Tom Jonah who was lying in the sun.
The big dog sniffed at the basket but did not offer to disturb the sleeping kittens. That would not do for the curious girls. They had to delve deeper into the natural lack of affinity between the canine and the feline families.
So Tess lifted one little black and white, squirmy kitten – just as its mother did, by the back of its neck – and set it upon the porch before the dog’s nose. The kitten became awake instantly. Blind as it was, it stiffened its spine into an arch, backed away from the vicinity of the dog precipitately, and “spit” like a tiny teakettle boiling over.
“Oh! oh! the horrid thing,” wailed Dot. “And poor Tom Jonah didn’t do a thing to it!”
“But see him!” gasped Tess, in a gale of giggles.
For really, Tom Jonah looked too funny for anything. He turned away his head with a most embarrassed expression of countenance and would not look again at the spitting little animal. He evidently felt himself in a most ridiculous position and finally got up and went off the porch altogether until the girls returned the basket of kittens to its proper place behind the stove.
At dinner that Sunday, when Uncle Rufus served the roast, he held the swinging door open until Tom Jonah paced in behind him into the dining-room. Seeing the roast placed before Mrs. MacCall, Tom Jonah sat down beside her chair in a good position to observe the feast; but waited his turn in a most gentlemanly manner.
Mrs. MacCall cut some meat for him and put it on a plate. This Uncle Rufus put before Tom Jonah; but the big dog did not offer to eat it until he was given permission. And now he no longer “gobbled,” but ate daintily, and sat back when he was finished like any well-bred person, waiting for the next course.
Even Aunt Sarah looked with approval upon the new acquisition to the family of the old Corner House. She had heard the tale of his rescue of Ruth’s poultry from the marauding Gypsy, and patted Tom Jonah’s noble head.
“It’s