the lawn, she saw this was what he was doing:
offering all he knew, hoping that someone might laugh
at him, and like him. And, not curiously, after
all, if everything were known, she found herself thinking
of another foolish creature, who had nothing in the
world to offer anybody, except what came out of the
wistfulness of a foolish, loving heart. Then,
though her lips smiled faintly as she thought of Noble
Dill, all at once a brightness trembled along the
eyelids of the Prettiest Girl in Town, and glimmered
over, a moment later, to shine upon her cheek.
“You get out!” Mr. Atwater shouted, “D’ye
hear me, you poodle?”
He found the missile, a stone of fair diameter.
He hurled it violently.
“There, darn you!”
The stone missed, and Gammire fled desperately after
it.
“You get over that fence!” Mr. Atwater
cried. “You wait till I find another rock
and I’ll——”
He began to search for another stone, but, before
he could find one, Gammire returned with the first.
He deposited it upon the ground at Mr. Atwater’s
feet.
“There’s your rock,” he said.
Mr. Atwater looked down at him fiercely, and through
the black chrysanthemum two garnet sparks glinted
waggishly.
“Didn’t you hear me tell you what I’d
do if you didn’t get out o’ here, you
darn poodle?”
Gammire “sat up,” placed his forepaws
together over his nose and prayed. “There’s
your rock,” he said. And he added, as clearly
as if he used a spoken language, “Let’s
get on with the game!”
Mr. Atwater turned to Kitty Silver. “Does
he—does he know how to speak, or shake
hands, or anything like that?” he asked.
* * * *
*
The next morning, as the peculiar old man sat at breakfast,
he said to the lady across the table: “Look
here. Who did give Gamin to us?”
Julia bit her lip; she even cast down her eyes.
“Well, who was it?”
Her demureness still increased. “It was—Noble
Dill.”
Mr. Atwater was silent; he looked down and caught
a clownish garnet gleam out of a blackness neighbouring
his knee. “Well, see here,” he said.
“Why can’t you—why can’t
you——”
“Why can’t I what?”
“Why can’t you sit out in the yard the
next time he calls here, instead of on the porch where
it blows all through the house? It’s just
as pleasant to sit under the trees, isn’t it?”
“Pleasanter,” said Julia.
By the end of October, with the dispersal of foliage
that has served all summer long as a screen for whatever
small privacy may exist between American neighbours,
we begin to perceive the rise of our autumn high tides
of gossip. At this season of the year, in our
towns of moderate size and ambition, where apartment
houses have not yet condensed and at the same time
sequestered the population, one may look over back
yard beyond back yard, both up and down the street;
especially if one takes the trouble to sit for an
hour or so daily, upon the top of a high fence at
about the middle of a block.
