seemed deserted. No colour, no movement, no sound. He sighed once more—“I'd like to eat jam and jam—lots of it,” he thought. “It would be fun to be sick.”
Mary arrived and swung herself up on to the window-seat.
“It's the 'Looking Glass' one. I hope you don't mind,” she said apprehensively.
“Oh, it's all right,” he allowed. He flung a glance back to the lighted nursery. It seemed by contrast with that grey world outside to blaze with colour; the red-painted ships on the wallpaper, the bright lights and shadows of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” the salmon fronts of the doll's house, the green and red of the village on the floor with the flowery trees, the blue tablecloth, the shining brass coal-scuttle all alive and sparkling in the flames and shadows of the fire, caught and held by the fine gold of the higher fender. Beyond that dead white—soon it would be dark, the curtains would be drawn, and still there would be nothing to do. He sighed again.
“It's a nice bit about the shop,” said Mary. Jeremy said nothing, so she began. She started at a run:
“She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have '“—sniff, sniff—“,' sud-den-ly suddenly wra-wra-w-r-a-p-p-e-d wrapped—'”
“Wrapped?” asked Jeremy.
“I don't know,” said Mary, rubbing her nose, “what it means, but perhaps we'll see presently, herself up in w-o-o-l wool. 'Alice rubbed her eyes and looked again she couldn't—'”
“'Looked again she couldn't'?” asked Jeremy. “It should be, 'she couldn't look again.'”
“Oh, there's a stop,” said Mary. “I didn't see. After 'again' there's a stop. 'She couldn't make out what had happened at all—'”
“I can't either,” said Jeremy crossly. “It would be better perhaps if I read it myself.”
“It will be all right in a minute,” said Mary confidently. “'Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a ship that was sitting on the counter?'” she finished with a run.
“A what?” asked Jeremy.
“A ship—”
“A ship! How could it sit on a counter?” he asked.
“Oh no, it's a sheep. How silly I am!” Mary exclaimed.
“You do read badly,” he agreed frankly. “I never can understand nothing.” And it was at that very moment that he saw the Dog.
II
He had been staring down into the garden with a gaze half abstracted, half speculative, listening with one ear to Mary, with the other to the stir of the fire, the heavy beat of the clock and the rustlings of Martha the canary.
He watched the snowy expanse of garden, the black gate, the road beyond. A vast wave of pale grey light, the herald of approaching dusk, swept the horizon, the snowy roofs, the streets, and Jeremy felt some contact with the strange air, the mysterious omens that the first snows of the winter spread about the land. He watched as though he were waiting for something to happen.
The creature came up very slowly over the crest of Orange Street. No one else was in sight, no cart, no horse, no weather-beaten wayfarer. At first the dog was only a little black smudge against the snow; then, as he arrived at the Coles' garden-gate, Jeremy could see him very distinctly. He was, it appeared, quite alone; he had been, it was evident, badly beaten by the storm. Intended by nature to be a rough and hairy dog, he now appeared before God and men a shivering battered creature, dripping and wind-tossed, bedraggled and bewildered. And yet, even in that first distant glimpse, Jeremy discerned a fine independence. He was a short stumpy dog, in no way designed for dignified attitudes and patronising superiority; nevertheless, as he now wandered slowly up the street, his nose was in the air and he said to the whole world: “The storm may have done its best to defeat me—it has failed. I am as I was. I ask charity of no man. I know what is due to me.”
It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot, and the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions had been resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation for sulkiness had been soundly established with all his circle.
Mary was reading … ! “'an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair, knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!'”
He touched her arm and whispered:
“I say, Mary, stop a minute—look at that dog down there.”
They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the gate; it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very slowly but with real dignity continued its way up the road.
“Poor thing,” said Jeremy. “It IS in a mess.” Then to their astonishment the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again as though it had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as though it were not wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the gate.
“Oh,” said Mary and Jeremy together.
“It's like Mother,” said Jeremy, “when she's going to see someone and isn't sure whether it's the right house.”
Then, most marvellous of unexpected climaxes, the dog suddenly began to squeeze itself between the bottom bar of the gate and the ground. The interval was fortunately a large one; a moment later the animal was in the Coles' garden.
The motives that led Jeremy to behave as he did are uncertain. It may have been something to do with the general boredom of the afternoon, it may have been that he felt pity for the bedraggled aspect of the animal—most probable reason of all, was that devil-may-care independence flung up from the road, as it were, expressly at himself.
The dog obviously did not feel any great respect for the Cole household. He wandered about the garden, sniffing and smelling exactly as though the whole place belonged to him, and a ridiculous stump of tail, unsubdued by the weather, gave him the ludicrous dignity of a Malvolio.
“I'm going down,” whispered Jeremy, flinging a cautious glance at Helen who was absorbed in her sewing.
Mary's eyes grew wide with horror and admiration. “You're not going out,” she whispered. “In the snow. Oh, Jeremy. They WILL be angry.”
“I don't care,” whispered Jeremy back again. “They can be.”
Indeed, before Mary's frightened whisper he had not intended to do more than creep down into the pantry and watch the dog at close range; now it was as though Mary had challenged him. He knew that it was the most wicked thing that he could do—to go out into the snow without a coat and in his slippers. He might even, according to Aunt Amy, die of it, but as death at present meant no more to him than a position of importance and a quantity of red-currant jelly and chicken, THAT prospect did not deter him. He left the room so quietly that Helen did not even lift her eyes.
Then upon the landing he waited and listened.
