Читать книгу The Black-Eyed Puppy - Katharine Pyle - Страница 3

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I AM a little white, rough-haired dog, with a black spot around one eye, and black ears and tail.

I am about the size of a terrier or a spaniel, but I’m not really either. At one time I thought I might be a poodle, but then it turned out I wasn’t. I’m just not any special kind of dog. My mother wasn’t any special kind either. She was a smooth-haired white dog. Fan was the only one of us puppies that looked like mother.

There were five of us. There were Rover and Fanny, and Jack and Snip, and then me. My name was Smarty, but it isn’t now.

We belonged to a man named O’Grady. It was he who gave us our names, and he named me Smarty because I was so smart. He said I was the smartest puppy he had ever seen. I heard him telling someone that. He said, “Why, that pup can almost talk; I believe he understands every word I say.” Of course I didn’t, but that’s what he said. I did understand a good deal, though.

I was the only one of the puppies that he kept. He gave the others away to different people. He kept only mother and me. Mother was getting sort of old and cross. She used to growl when I tried to play with her.

Mr. O’Grady used to play with me in the evenings while he smoked his pipe. He called it playing, but it was rough sort of play. Sometimes he made me yelp. And he used to blow tobacco smoke in my face. I hated that. It made me feel sick.

He spent part of the time teaching me tricks. He taught me to sit up and beg, and to roll over and keep quiet when he said “dead dog,” and to hold something on my nose until he gave the word, and then to throw it up in the air and catch it.

He liked to make me show off before people when they came in in the evenings. They seemed to think I was very smart. I wonder what they would have thought later on when I belonged to Mr. Bonelli and was really a trick dog and acted on a stage, with crowds of people there to look on!

There was one trick I had that nobody taught me. It just came to me naturally. I had a way of lifting my lips when I was pleased and drawing them back so that I showed all my teeth. Mr. O’Grady called it grinning. Everybody seemed to think that the funniest trick of any that I did.

As it turned out later, that was the best trick of all. Things would have been very different with me if I hadn’t had that trick of grinning.

When I was big enough Mr. O’Grady began to take me to the factory with him. The factory was the place where he went to work.

He would tie me in the factory yard and leave me there until the noon hour when he and the other men stopped working to eat their dinners. Then he would come for me and take me in where they were. The men used to throw me scraps from their dinner pails. I liked that, but after they had finished eating they would begin to tease me. They thought it was funny, but I used to get so mad at them I felt like tearing them to pieces; but I was only a puppy and couldn’t really hurt them, so they thought that was funny too.

One day—it was a cold day in winter—it seemed to me they teased me worse than ever before. I just yelped at them, I got so mad.

When the whistles blew for the men to go back to work Mr. O’Grady took me out in the yard again and tied me to the post. “There! You stay there and cool off your temper,” he said. Then he went back into the factory again.

But I wasn’t going to stay there. I made up my mind to run away and go to live with someone else, where I wouldn’t be teased.

I took the piece of twine he had tied me with between my teeth and gnawed and gnawed, and presently, in a very little while, I gnawed it in two.

I ran over to the fence and squeezed through a hole, and then I was out in the open street.

I ran on gaily down the street, sometimes on three legs and sometimes on four. I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but it was fun to run along all by myself, and not have to follow at the heels of anyone.

Presently I came to an open alley gate. I went inside and found a garbage can that smelled of things to eat. I pawed it over and had a fine time hunting among the scraps, but presently a woman came to the door and shouted at me to get out. She had a broom in her hand, and she seemed cross so I ran out into the street again in a hurry. I didn’t even stop to take a bone with me.

A little farther down the street I met another puppy. He was just about my size and we made friends and had a fine play together, but someone opened a door near-by and called to him to come home, and he ran away and left me.

It was growing late now, and getting colder too. The wind was so sharp it made me shiver. It had begun to snow, and it kept snowing harder and harder, and the wind blew the snow in my eyes till I could hardly see where I was going.

I thought I’d better find some place where I could creep in and keep warm until morning, and then maybe I would go home again. I knew Mr. O’Grady would be sorry because I had run away. But then he oughtn’t to have let the men tease me the way they did. And he had laughed when they did it, as though he thought it funny, instead of telling them to stop.

I had come now to a street where all the houses were big and had big windows with lights shining out of them. They all had brown stone steps going up to their front doors. Down under these steps were other doors. These other doors were lower than the street, and had steps going down to them. I found afterwards they were called basement doors, but I didn’t know it then. I thought I would get down in one of these basements and wait there till it stopped snowing. Anyway, I would be out of the wind.

I ran down the first steps I came to and crouched against the door. It wasn’t very warm there, but anyway it was better than being up in the street.

It kept on getting colder and colder, and I felt so lonesome that presently I began to whine.

I’d only been whining a little while when I heard something inside the door snuffing at the crack, and then a low growl.

I put my nose down to the crack and I sniffed, too, and then I could tell by the smell that there was a dog on the other side of the door. I whined again, and then I heard two dogs snuffing at the crack. They both growled in an angry way, and first one and then the other began barking. They barked louder and louder.

Someone inside opened the door right quick before I expected it, and both the dogs came rushing out at me, barking fiercely.

They were only little dogs, but they made such a noise they scared me. I yelped and ran up the steps to the street as fast as I could, with them after me.

I thought they would certainly bite me, but someone called to them and they ran on down the steps again, looking back to bark at me once or twice.

After they had gone in the house again I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to go down in any of the other basements for fear some other dogs might get after me.

I howled and howled.

I stood there shivering for a while, and then I went up the brown stone steps and got in a corner of the doorway there. The wind was so cold and I was so lonesome and miserable that I began to howl. I howled and howled, and the snow blew against me, and all up and down the street there didn’t seem to be anything alive but me.

Then suddenly the door I was leaning against opened. It opened so quickly that I almost fell over backward.

In the doorway stood a man, looking down at me. A boy was peeping around the door.

“There he is, father, down in the corner,” cried the boy.

The man stooped and picked me up by the scruff of the neck, and lifted me into the hall and shut the door. “The poor miserable little beast,” he said. I was so cold I could hardly stand.

The boy knelt down beside me and patted me. “He’s almost frozen,” he said.

“He would have been frozen by morning. Take him down and put him in the laundry, and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do with him.”

“I wish I could keep him,” said the boy.

He got up and coaxed me along the hall, and I followed him as best I could, but I was so stiff I could hardly move.

He took me down some steps and into a big room that had hardly anything in it, but it was warm and comfortable.

“Now, you stay here,” said the boy, “and I’ll get you something to eat.”

He ran away, shutting the door after him, but presently he came back again with a plate of food and set it down before me.

I was so hungry I ate and ate. “Why, you poor little fellow,” he cried, “you’re almost starved.” And then he said, “I believe I’ll call you Ragamuffin, and Rags for short. Or no; I’ll call you Muffins. That’s a good name. Poor little Muffins! Good Muffins!”

I wanted to tell him my name was Smarty, but I was busy eating, and then he wouldn’t have understood me anyway.

All the while I was eating I kept wagging my tail to show him how pleased I was, and when I finished the last scrap I looked up in his face and licked my lips and grinned.

“Why, you cute little fellow!” he cried. “You’re grinning!” He seemed to think it was just as cute as everybody else did.

He patted me and praised me, and then he went away and got a piece of carpet and folded it up and put it in a corner of the room for a bed for me to sleep on.

I was so full and comfortable that I went right over and curled up on it, and then I looked up at him and wagged my tail and grinned again.

“Oh, I do hope I can keep you, Muffins,” he said; “you’re so cunning.” And he patted me again and then he went away and left me, and I was so sleepy I just sighed and shut my eyes and went to sleep, and never knew anything more until it was morning again.