Ross rose. "If Miss Bryant will permit me, I shall be only too glad to accompany her home," he said courteously.
There was nothing to do but submit with the best grace she could assume. Once out of doors, she was the first to break the silence:
"I'm afraid to be out alone – in the city."
"Yes," replied her escort cheerily, "it's a pity you didn't bring your dog!" He could have bitten his tongue out for making such an unlucky speech, but to his surprise Katherine broke down and sobbed hysterically.
Mr. Ross took both her hands in his own. "You are tired and nervous, Miss Bryant, and I beg you to think no more about what has happened. You have no idea how much good you did me out in that miserable little place, and I shall be only too glad to be your friend, if you will let me."
Katherine wiped her eyes: "If you can be my friend, I ought to be very willing to be yours," and just outside of her door Canada and the United States clasped hands in a solemn treaty of peace.
Safely in her own room, the mistress of Rex sat down before the mirror and studied her face attentively. "Katherine Bryant," she said to herself, "you are an idiot! Not foolish, nor silly, nor half witted, nor anything like that – just a plain idiot! He has graduated from the University with high honours, and you, with your miserable little boarding-school education, have instructed him on many subjects. I am thoroughly ashamed of you."
When she finally slept, her dreams were a medley of handsome strangers, mixed with dogs, and reddish-yellow curls tied up with blue ribbons.
Leaning up against the corner lamp-post, Mr. Robert Ross indulged in a spasm of irreverent mirth, but with a great effort he preserved a calm exterior when he again entered the drawing-room of his hostess.
On their way home Mrs. Boyce said: "Bob, why don't you go into business with your uncle and become a good American citizen? We'd love to have you with us, and there is surely a good opening here."
"I'll think about it," he answered, and he did, with the usual result, for it is proverbial that he who hesitates is lost.
Mr. Boyce was quite willing to shift a part of his responsibility to the broad shoulders of his nephew, and an agreement was easily reached. Emperor was quartered in the back yard, where he fretted for a few days and then wreaked his vengeance on sundry grocery boys and milkmen.
When his master went out, the dog usually went along except when Miss Bryant and Rex were to be favoured with a call. If the two dogs met, the customary disturbance ensued. Rex included Ross in his hatred of Emperor, and Emperor was equally hostile toward Miss Bryant.
"Rex," said Katherine, one day, "you are a very nice doggie, but I won't have you treat Mr. Ross with such disrespect. The other night, when we were going out, you had no business to growl when he buttoned my gloves, nor to sniff in that disgusted way at the roses he brought. If you ever do that again, I shall let the dogcatcher take you to the pound!"
The imaginary spectacle of Rex en route to the pound nearly unnerved Katherine, but she felt that she must be severe. Ross punished Emperor with a chain, or with confinement in the back yard, which the dog hated, but where it was necessary to keep him a part of the time, and for a while all went well.
But Ross went away one evening without explaining matters to the sensitive being in the back yard.
Emperor knew well enough where he had gone – knew he was visiting that disagreeable girl who owned that other Irish setter – a very impertinent dog whose manners were so bad that he was a disgrace to the whole setter tribe!
He sulked over his wrongs for an hour or so, and then crawled out through a friendly hole in the fence which he had for some time past been spending his hours of imprisonment in making.
The dining-room of the house on the avenue was lighted by a single gas jet, and the shades were lowered. Miss Bryant and the chafing dish together had evolved a rarebit which made the inner man glow with pleasure.
"Do you remember that awful quarrel we had about annexing Canada to the United States?" asked Robert.
Katherine remembered distinctly.
He went over to her side of the table. "What do you think about it now?"
It was a very ordinary question, but Miss Bryant turned scarlet.
"I – I don't know," she faltered.
He put his arm around her. "I give in," he said; "annexation is the most desirable thing in the world – when shall it take place?"
Katherine raised her head timidly. "Say it, sweetheart," he whispered tenderly.
It happened at this moment that Emperor arrived in search of his master. Rex was sitting on the front steps and declined to take in his card. Then the shrieking, howling barking ball rolled into the vestibule, and Ross made a dash for the door. With considerable effort he got Rex into the back yard, and locked Emperor into the vestibule. Then he went back to Katherine.
He tried to speak lightly, but his voice trembled with earnestness: "Dearest, this entire affair has been coloured, and suggested by, and mixed up with dogs. I think now there will be an interval of peace for at least ten minutes, and I am asking you to marry me."
Rex raised his voice in awful protest, and Emperor replied angrily to the challenge, as he raged back and forth in the vestibule, but Robert heard Katherine's tremulous "Yes" with a throb of joy which even the consciousness of warring elements outside could not lessen. The little figure against his breast shook with something very like a giggle, and Katherine's eyes shining with merriment met his with the question: "What on earth shall we do with the dogs?"
Robert laughed and drew her closer: "It's strictly international, isn't it? Canada and the United States quarrel – "
"And Ireland arbitrates!" said Katherine.
Three months later, in the drawing-room on Jefferson Avenue, to the accompaniment of flowers, lights, and soft music, the treaty was declared permanent. There was a tiny dark coloured footprint on the end of Katherine's train, which no one appeared to notice, and a white silk handkerchief carefully arranged hid from public view a slightly larger spot on the shining linen of the bridegroom, where Emperor had registered his enthusiastic approval of his master's apparel.
But the rest of the committee, in pale green gowns, were bridesmaids, while Emperor and Rex, resplendent in new collars, and having temporarily adjusted their difference as long as they were under guard, had seats of honour among the guests.
A Child of Silence
At the end of the street stood the little white house which Jack Ward was pleased to call his own. Five years he had lived there, he and Dorothy. How happy they had been! But things seemed to have gone wrong some way, since – since the baby died in the spring. A sob came into Jack's throat, for the little face had haunted him all day.
Never a sound had the baby lips uttered, and the loudest noises had not disturbed his rest. It had seemed almost too much to bear, but they had loved him more, if that were possible, because he was not as other children were. Jack had never been reconciled but Dorothy found a world of consolation in the closing paragraph of a magazine article on the subject:
"And yet we cannot believe these Children of Silence to be unhappy. Mrs. Browning says that 'closed eyes see more truly than ever open do,' and may there not be another world of music for those to whom our own is soundless? In a certain sense they are
