Mrs. Mersey. "You don't suppose—you couldn't suppose—Why, what do you think I am made of? Nobody can take the dog from you—nobody, if I say so."
"Not even the Town?" gasped Jonathan. "You hadn't thought, had you, about the Town? They say he eats so much."
"Not even the Town!" cried the lady, hotly. "Let him eat. I'll see to that. Let him eat all he can—and you, too. The dog is yours. Don't you understand?"
"Oh, madam!" gasped Jonathan. "Oh, madam!"
He turned his face upon the collie's neck and cried like a child. And David lifted up his voice and cried too. And the summer lady did as much. For she was a woman of quite unorganized, kindly impulses, as we have said. She did not care whether she made people happy in the usual way or not. She only cared to make them happy.
The chance divinity—as is the way of such divinities—took Jonathan's case warmly to heart. Within an hour beef tea, cold fowl, strawberries, sugar, fresh milk, and coffee tempted the starving old man to the first sufficient meal that he had eaten for six days. When Jonathan found in the hamper a package of dog-biscuit and a portly mutton bone, he brought the tips of his fingers together in the touching Albert Dürer way, as if he were asking grace over David's supper.
"I said she was just a woman, David!" he muttered, with wet and happy eyes.
She was woman enough to follow her pretty benefaction in person the next day. It was rather early in the morning, but she found the old man up and dressed, and tottering about the house in his clean, worn, black coat—two buttons sewed on with blue thread and one with white. David hung on Jonathan's every motion, head on master's knee, paws around his neck, kisses on his cheek. The dog's fine eyes had a frightened look. He regarded Mrs. Mersey with suspicion, but in silence. David's faith in humanity had received a terrific shock. The only fact in life of which the collie felt any assurance was that his master was not to be blamed for the existence of dog-catchers and coachmen.
"Madam," began old Jonathan, flushing with pleasure, "You do me an honor. I was about to try to call upon you to say—if you will permit me, madam—that I should take it as a favor if you will allow me to pay back David's price, on the instalment plan. I have seventy-six cents towards it—" His hand went to his pocket. "That leaves him in your debt one dollar and twenty-four cents. I think David would feel happier if he were really my dog again. I hope I have not offended you, madam?" he broke off, anxiously, when he saw the expression of doubt or displeasure which brushed the face of his benefactress.
"But Peter said—How much did you sell the dog to Peter for, Jonathan?"
"Two dollars," said Jonathan, promptly, "the amount of his tax bill."
The lady challenged the old man's candid eyes for an instant only. This was but the second time that she had seen Jonathan Perch; but she knew Peter Sweeney.
"Very well," she said, quietly, "I will take that money—if you wish me to."
Shining with joy, Jonathan placed seventy-six cents in the lady's white-gloved hand. She had rather a small hand for a large lady.
"David!" cried Jonathan, ecstatically, "are you your master's dog? Bark once?—No? Bark twice?—Yes?" Then David pierced the June morning with double barks, doubly repeated, and reiterated still again.
"That's no ordinary dog," observed Mrs. Mersey. "Can he do anything else as clever as that?"
"Why, that's nothing, madam!" boasted Jonathan. "David has a vocabulary of two hundred English words that he understands, and twelve French ones. But my French is pretty rusty now, so his polite education has been neglected. He can spell several sentences. And he can count—let me see—he can count up to twenty."
"I should like to see some of these miracles, if you please," suggested the lady. She sat back on Jonathan's crumbling old lounge, and David sat before her and studied her critically. David had not yet satisfied himself whether the lady was an accessory after the fact to Peter Sweeney.
