Dogtown / Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople

CHAPTER VI TABLE BOARDERS

When Miss Letty had been two months at the Hilltop Farm everybody had fallen in love with her, twofoots and fourfoots alike. That is, everybody but Mr. Hugh; he was simply polite and tolerant, treating her new enthusiasm for dogs, horses, and outdoor things as merely the whim of a spoiled child.

Miss Letty had packed her Paris finery away in Miss Jule’s big garret, excepting a few pretty things for evening wear, and went about in white duck skirts and dainty white shirt waists, belts and ties, for as she said, “If you are much with dogs and horses, it isn’t enough to have gowns that will wash, you must have things that are boilable.”

So Tommy changed her name from Flower Lady to White Lady, and doubled his devotion, recklessly buying three cookie cutters at the ten-cent store in town,—a heart, a rabbit, and a rooster,—that his offerings of ginger cakes and jumbles coaxed from cook might not lack variety. The heart and rooster cookies were sure to be in good condition when Miss Letty received them, but the rabbit offered greater temptation to Tommy in transit. It was a queerly built rabbit, and stood very high on its legs. Tommy discovered that if the legs were nibbled off carefully and evenly, bunny looked as if he was lying down, so if the cookie was particularly crisp, and temptation overcame him, he soothed his scruples by telling Miss Letty that “to-day the rabbit is tired.”

As for Anne, she had found a companion after her own heart, for Miss Letty was as happy in her newly found freedom as a young house-bred animal having its first taste of liberty. Anne offered to give up Fox, but it was not necessary, for Miss Letty could control Miss Jule’s own mount Kate by merely a pat on the neck, and together the two girls—for at this time Miss Letty was as young as Anne—explored every wood path in the vicinity, having an escort of Dogtown police in the shape of Mr. Wolf, Quick, Tip, and Waddles to protect them, with Colin as a sort of clown to amuse them when they rested.

At first Miss Letty spoke in French to Anne, because her mother asked it and it was really her own tongue, but she soon stopped, saying frankly that it seemed as much out of place in New England wood and farm life as her lace frills or Hamlet’s long curls and bracelets, while Anne’s Indian names for beasts and birds caught her fancy, and Miss Letty was as quick as Anne in detecting an unusual bird note, even though she might not know the name of the bird.

In fact, she was rather slow in learning to name birds by sight, and came galloping down so often to tell Anne that there were some great strange birds in the meadow, with green and blue feathers, when they were only crows, or perhaps grackles seen in the bright sun, that it came to be quite a joke. But if she once learned a bird’s name from hearing its song, she never forgot it.

It was Miss Letty also who discovered that Tip and Colin had musical ears, and could be made to sing. Waddles had always been a musician of ability, being so sensitive to vocal sounds that Anne was obliged to shut him up in the farthest away barn if her mother had a musical evening.

Jolly piano music seemed to annoy him, and he would get up and walk away of his own accord, with an injured air; but if Anne in practising chanced upon a minor scale, then from under sofa, bush, or remotest spot, where the sound carried, Waddles appeared tiptoeing along with tail erect and wonderful dilating eyes.

If he happened to be indoors, he would come within two or three feet of the piano; if outside, to the nearest door or window, and sitting down, throw back his head and let the sound well forth, high and in key with the scale, only dropping to a throaty gurgle when he had to take breath. On and on he would sing until the scale stopped, and then he crept away to seclusion, as if quite exhausted, and lying quite still, gave an occasional little bay that sounded like a sob.

This singing was entirely different from the baying and full cry of hunting hounds, and after a while Anne discovered that there were three other sounds than her minor scales that produced it,—the call of the whip-poor-will, the quavering of a screech owl, and a French horn that one of Mr. Hugh’s stable men played, which, in spite of the distance, sounded quite clear and true when the windows were open on summer nights.

Tip, Quick, and Colin’s singing was of a different order, but quite remarkable, for setters and spaniels are not credited with the voices that belong to all hounds, and when, during one of their lessons, as Miss Letty, with finger raised, whistled the tune that started them, Mr. Wolf’s sombre, deep-barking St. Bernard voice suddenly joined, counteracting the fox terrier’s double high c. The effect was astounding. Mr. Hugh, who was riding up the wood road, stopped short in sheer amazement, muttering to himself, “It’s odd that such a little butterfly creature should have so much influence with dogs.” Then, as the lesson ended, and Quick, having scented him, came bounding across the lawn, showing that he had a paper frill round his neck and a small red cigar ribbon bow on his tail, he said something about “more circus tricks,” and gave his horse a quite unnecessary cut with his whip and galloped away, Quick following much to his chagrin. If he had looked back he would have seen Miss Jule standing at the road edge laughing until the tears ran down her cheeks, while Miss Letty danced along the piazza holding Hamlet’s paws, saying: “We’ve shocked the Great Bear again. I wonder what he will say when he sees you ride Fox, all dressed in your red jacket.”

Miss Letty had taken great pains to keep out of Mr. Hugh’s way ever since the day that she first met him, when she heard him tell Tommy that he did not care for people who were “not useful”; and she never spoke of him except as the Great Bear, giving her aunt as her reason for the name, that when she looked out of her window at night at the stars, the constellation of the Great Bear (which is commonly called the Dipper) pointed its tail straight at Mr. Hugh’s house.

Everything had been quiet in Dogtown for some time. To the twins the novelty of the first hunting trips was wearing off, and Happy was resuming her usual habits,—going to walk with Anne and Waddles, sunning herself by the lilac bushes, and going nightly for the cows with Baldy. Now she had also her devoted son and servitor for a companion, Jill only going by fits and starts as suited her.

Monotony, however, is against the laws of Dogtown, and to prevent such a state of things, for nobody could see any other reason, one fine morning Miss Jill ran away.

At least Anne insisted that this was the case, though she could not prove it, and all that was really known was that when Baldy came for the milking pails at 6 A.M., he let Happy and the pups out of the nursery kennel; and that two hours later, when Anne went to feed them, Happy and Jack were waiting for her, but Jill was nowhere to be found. Moreover, when Anne whistled to Jack and said: “Where’s Jill? Find Jill!” instead of running about and giving funny shrill barks as usual until she answered, he paid no attention whatever.

Tommy suggested dolefully that the train might have killed her the same as it had Lily, but a careful search proved the contrary. Anne’s father was inclined to believe that she had been stolen by some one going to the market town with a milk or vegetable wagon, as many such passed by, and Jill had always made friends rather too easily. Miss Jule scoffed at this, saying that the people about were all too fond of dogs to allow such a theft to pass unpunished, and had followed up all dog stealing so swiftly that it had become almost an unknown crime.

Nevertheless, Miss Jule called up the sheriff, who was a lover of animals, and if he once saw a dog could recognize it again anywhere, and sent him scouring the countryside over, with no result, for Jill had vanished as completely as if she had taken wing.

“Of course I’m sorry,” said Anne, rather doubtfully to Miss Letty, who came down to offer sympathy; “but it isn’t as if Waddles, or even Jack, had gone. It is horrid to lose anything, and not to know what has become of poor Jill, for she may be hurt and lying somewhere sick and hungry, yet somehow I think that she didn’t care much for us, and that she has been planning to run away for some time.”

Miss Letty laughed at the notion, but Anne could not be shaken in her belief, and as there was nothing to do but wait, she waited. Meantime Happy Hall was quite a tranquil place, that is, on the rare days when neither Hamlet, Mr. Wolf, Quick, nor Tip came to visit Waddles, or Schnapps and Friday did not come to drink in the cow pond and meet Pinkie Scott’s fox terriers and Hans Sachs the dachshund on the war-path for rats behind the barn, Pinkie’s house being just above. When this happened, hard words were exchanged, for though Schnapps and Hans Sachs had been litter brothers, they were now in deadly feud, and of course Friday stood up for his chum.

The summer of this particular season that the children always remembered afterward as “the year when Miss Letty came,” was very warm indeed, and Anne established a midday retreat in her beloved old apple tree, or rather two retreats. One was high up in the broad branches where you could look down into various birds’ nests. A few slats, placed long ago by Obi, the garden boy, had been added to by Baldy, so that the perch had places for three. The other was a sort of house below, furnished with chairs, a table, and hammocks. This gave shelter above and below even in rainy weather, and from it in different directions the lawn, garden, shrubbery, kennels, and distant hills could be seen with all their inhabitants of flowers, butterflies, birds, and fourfooted animals.

Anne called this place the “time eater,” because, as she said, “you go there to stay a minute, or you sit down to read, but you don’t come away and you don’t read; you simply look and listen, and before you know it is dinner time, and the morning is all eaten up.”

The things that Anne and Tommy heard there as they spent their vacation time together were Heart of Nature’s own stories, and it was his own voice that told them.It was also a good point of vantage from which to watch the play of the dogs, and Anne discovered one thing beyond question, that where dogs live and are fed there the birds gather. In fact, during the nesting season that year the doings of the birds and little beasts that fed from the dogs’ table would fill a whole book.

Anne and Tommy.At the north of the nursery kennel was a broad-topped stone fence. Being convenient and of exactly the right height, Anne used a wide hollow stone as a mortar for pounding the dog biscuit, taking a narrow stone for a pestle, for the Waddles family all preferred drinking their milk or soup, and having the biscuit in bits the size of small lumps of sugar so that it could be gnawed like a bone, to having it soaked into pulpy stew. Of course there was cracker dust left in the mortar, and little bits would fly about here and there. But no matter how much dust was left at evening, the next morning found this place as clean as if it had been scrubbed, so Anne began to watch.

There was a pair of song-sparrows that had their second nest in a great rose-bush by the walk, and though the parents gave their nestlings only insect food, they fed upon the biscuit crumbs. These two soon grew so tame that when they had cleaned the wall they hopped about the dog houses and helped themselves from the dishes, giving shy little flutters if the twins barked at them, but only going a few feet and returning very quickly.

Then there were the chipping sparrows, the dear little brown velvet-capped birds, who are so tame that the Latin word for sociable is part of the name the wise men give them. They actually hopped on Waddles’s back and almost caught the moist bits that fell from his jaws.

The goldfinches came also, beginning in early spring when the males and females wear the same clothes of dull olive-brown and black, and making daily visits all through the season until the males after wearing a mottled costume put on their yellow wedding coats and black caps, and put them off again.

Black and white nuthatches took their dog food differently, picking up the larger bits and carrying them into the apple tree, where they hammered them to pieces exactly as they would crack beechnuts or corn kernels.

Anne was not surprised that birds like these should feed on dog biscuit, but when catbirds, robins, and phoebes—the air-living flycatchers—began to be the regular table boarders of the Waddles family, she began to wonder. These last birds were of course first attracted by the kettle of cooked meat scraps that was often hung in the tree to cool; but lacking meat, they were satisfied with the crumbs.

One morning a lame-winged crow appeared from the wood edge and walked solemnly up to the dish where Jack and Jill were eating, giving a squawk that sent them in haste to the nursery, though Jill soon came back and attempted to flirt with his crowship, which so surprised him that he nearly choked to death by swallowing too quickly. This ended in Baldy’s catching the crow, who was not a welcome garden guest, as was proved by the chorus of alarm notes that arose at his appearance, and he actually had the destruction of many orchard homes written against him in the Birdland records.

One morning Bobwhite, who had been whistling and telling his name proudly from the protected meadows all the spring, appeared on the fence. Anne held her breath and Tommy watched, round eyed with eagerness. Bob threw back his head and proclaimed his name proudly; then no one disputing him he called more plaintively, poor-bobwhite! dropped from the wall to the grass, and then walked along the gravel path as unconcernedly as any barnyard fowl. Coming to where the pups had upset their dish, he gave a few scratches and began to pick up the smallest bits as if he was gleaning grain in the stubble.

At this moment Mrs. Waddles coming round the house corner flushed Bob, and he rose with the whirring of wings that is one of the eery sounds of the autumn lanes every year before grouse, quail, and woodcock have grown too gun shy, and, going over the garden house, disappeared in the long grass. But he came again and took home a report of the good eating, for one summer morning a little after dawn, when Anne was sitting on the foot of her bed and looking out of her window, she saw what she at first took to be Tommy’s banty hen leading a large brood of chicks down the garden path. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she leaned out of the window and saw that they were not the bantams, but Mamma Quail and the children out for a breakfast walk.

Anne hurried down as quickly as she could, but Waddles cheered so loudly, thinking that she was also going for a walk, that the party disappeared in the quince bushes before she could steal up to them. It had rained in the night, and their chicken-like footprints in the fine moist gravel by the empty dog dishes told her that they had breakfasted there.

In autumn the jays always came slyly to the oaks and beeches at Happy Hall and carried away nuts and acorns for winter use, storing some in a hollow chestnut in the pasture, and others under the shingles of the old cow barn.

When the resting season came, however, they usually stole away to the pine woods across the river, as Anne’s father did not encourage them about the garden; for whether or not they are always unneighbourly egg thieves, it is certain they carry terror to the gentler hearts of Birdland, and at Happy Hall nothing might stay that could annoy the wood thrushes and brown thrashers that returned season after season.

What was Anne’s surprise then one June morning, to see in the orchard unmistakable flashes of “jay blue,” which is a colour by itself, and not to be mistaken by the owner of the Magic Spectacles for the colour of either bluebird, indigo-bird, king-fisher, or heron. Next she heard the jay’s bell note, not the harsh jeering “jay-jay” of alarm, but the spring call, like the striking together of well-tempered bits of metal. Then came a chorus of alarm cries from all the birds of the neighbourhood, and a commotion in the trees over the garden house.

As Anne was going out to see what was the matter, a flash of blue crossed the sunlight and landed on the walk, and there was Tchin-dees the blue jay himself, in flawless bravery of feathers.

He put his head on one side and peered here and there saucily, as much as to say: “Where is your old dog bread, anyway? Stingy this morning, aren’t you? Yes, I’ve been here before, you can’t fool me. I know it’s after breakfast time.”

The dog dishes were not in sight, and there appeared to be no scraps upon the ground, but Tchin-dees was not daunted. In the nursery kennel slept Jack and Jill, stretched out as flat as if they were cookie dogs.

Their food dish stood by the doorway, well inside. It was full, for they had not yet breakfasted.

Tchin-dees spied it, took a survey of the situation, hopped into the dish, and began to stir up the bits with his feet in order to more easily choose the smallest.

He gave a start and flutter when he spied Anne, but making up his mind that a meal in the stomach is worth several in the dish, returned to the charge, finally carrying an obstinate fragment to the stone wall where he beat it with his bill, keeping one eye on Anne meanwhile, and making a face at her she avers, as he flew away.

When Anne told Miss Jule about the “table boarders,” she laughed and said, “What have I always told you should be painted on boards and posted in every country town like the ‘keep-off-the-grass’ signs in parks?” Anne remembered that it was,—

“If you hate birds, keep cats.

If you love birds, keep dogs.”

Truly, who can say that they have seen wild birds feeding from a cat’s dish when its owner was at home, or pulling out pussy’s fur for a nest lining.

Among the fourfoots who shared the hospitality of the Waddles family table were coons, skunks, weasels, red and gray squirrels, chipmunks, and the various gnawers of meadow, wood, and wall, the least of these being the tawny-backed white-footed mice and tiny field mice, scarcely bigger than bumblebees.

There were few mornings that stories of one or more of these animals might not be read by the keen-eyed on or about the stone wall, or on near-by tree trunks, in footprints on the ground or damp stones, or by claw marks on bark, etc. As to the field mice, they made the wall their turnpike to which the various nooks between the stones were cross-roads, and all day long they came and feasted daintily upon the crumbs, sitting up and cleaning their whiskers and paws after each meal.

Of late Anne had found many “owl balls” about the wall and under the pine trees, but never an owl could she see; for though a few came about every winter, they generally went early to the deep woods, where they kept company with the jays. These balls, which, as the snow owl once told Tommy-Anne at his Xmas party, were the pieces of the things they ate but could not digest, and so rolled into little balls and spit out, seemed to be all made of the fur and bones of field mice; so really, as Anne told Tommy when they discovered them, “the Owls were the Waddles’s table boarders also, only in a sort of second-hand way because, you see, the mice eat the dog food, and then the owls wait until they are through and eat the mice.”

But where did the owls hide? Anne thought that she knew every nook and cranny where they could nest, and Tommy usually managed to wriggle himself into the places she could not reach.

One night there was a commotion in the orchard; the evening song broke up early, and birds darted to and fro, giving alarm cries. Happy and Jack started off together and in a moment Waddles followed, but instead of crying and going nose to the ground, they sniffed the air and were silent, tiptoeing about among the ferns that grew under the pine trees.

After Tommy had gone to bed Anne heard a strange quavering noise close to the house. It was pale moonlight, and stepping out Anne found that her father was walking down the wild path toward the orchard, so she joined him. As she was telling about the unusual sound, it came again quite close. It was a sort of crooning, ending in “shay-shay-shay,” as if dried peas were sharply shaken in a sieve. A moment later a dark object flapped across, brushing Anne’s face.

“A screech-owl,” whispered her father. “Keep still a moment and I will see if I can call it.” He imitated the sound perfectly and again the bird swooped directly across his face, snapping its beak, while a second owl appeared a little farther on and began the same tactics with Anne.Anne tried to call and was so successful that she soon had to put her arms above her head to protect her face, the birds grew so bold.

“They must have a nest near by,” said her father; “they are teaching the young to fly, and we are interrupting their signalling.”

“Look, do look!” whispered Anne. “Oh, the dear little fluffy thing, it’s cuter than a kitten or a puppy,” and there among the pine branches in the moon path, directly on a line with her nose, perched a baby screech-owl, its little slant-wise eyes tightly closed.

Anne put up her hand to take it, but a screech-owl, like a weasel asleep, is a deceptive thing. Six claws fastened themselves in her flesh,—claws barbed like fish-hooks and of surprising strength. She tried to drop the baby, but it wouldn’t let go, and her father had to pry its grip off with a stick; but the pain was soon forgotten by the sight of another owl farther up, and then another, until they had counted six of the fuzzy balls in addition to the parents.

Anne, with her handkerchief tied about her hand, protested that it did not pain her, and so the pair stayed for an hour, and watched the play which consisted of signalling, flying, and then the feeding of the young birds as if by way of reward.

Presently Waddles, Happy, and Jack came back, following each other in a straight line through the orchard and across the wall. As they turned into the wild walk, Mamma Owl, at least it was reasonable to suppose it was she, as the females are the most alert when the young are flying, swooped at Waddles who was in the lead, flapped him in the face with a heavy wing, and gave an unearthly screech not a foot from his sensitive ears.

For once Waddles was daunted and sat down suddenly. Mrs. Waddles and Jack being close behind did likewise. The owl gave another scream and a long-drawn shay-shay-shay; but this time instead of frightening Waddles, it seemed to strike the musical note in his soul, and settling firmly on his haunches he threw back his head and began to sing. His lips moved very little but the chords in his throat could be seen to vibrate even by the moonlight.

Jack, after a few squeaks and barks, joined in a queer trembling treble, and finally the noise penetrated Happy’s brain, deaf though she was, and she added to the din by a tune in a wholly different key.The effect was as bewildering to Anne and her father as to the soldiers in a procession when they are an equal distance between two bands playing different tunes. At first they laughed, then put their fingers in their ears, called to the dogs and tried to stop the din, for it was being taken up far and near, the shrieks and imitation bays of Pinkie Scott’s fox terriers, who didn’t know how to sing, being particularly piercing. In fact, Miss Jule afterward said that all her dogs responded, and that Mr. Hugh’s hounds and Squire Burley’s kept it up half the night.

Jack and Happy were easily quieted, but Waddles was irrepressible and continued to sing to himself after he went to his sleeping place on the rug outside of Anne’s door, so that long after the household had vainly tried to go to sleep, and Tommy half waking had an argument with his mother, and insisted upon being dressed, saying that he knew it was morning, because he “heard roosters,” Waddles was led out to his house and chained for the night, the severest punishment that he could have.

Anne tried to console him from her window, but as soon as he seemed about to lie down, he began again, and Anne retired in disgust; at her last glimpse of him he was standing motionless with his head raised and facing the moon in musical ecstasy. She did not know, however, that Mamma Owl was mouse hunting in deep shadow along the wall back of the kennel, saying things that no self-respecting dog could hear and keep silence.

The next morning Anne’s first thought was of the owls, and that she must try to find where they had nested. She believed that she and Tommy had explored every tree in the neighbourhood since March when the ice melted. The nest must be somewhere in the orchard, for there was nothing in the owl boxes that were put in the pines several years before.

When she threw open the shutters toward the wooded side of the place, her eye rested on two unusual bumps on the reddish bark of a Scotch pine. She looked again, and even without the aid of her field-glass saw that two of the baby screech-owls had settled for their daytime sleep in the crotches of the pine, their young rusty gray feathers so blending with the bark that it would have been impossible to see them except from the slant of light and the fact that she was on a level with them.

Waddles Baying the Owls.

Hurrying down she walked under the tree, and though she knew exactly where they perched, it was some time before she could find them again. Their eyes were tightly closed, yet as she walked around the tree the heads turned and followed her until it seemed as if they would twist them off altogether.

“I know where some of those words come from that you do not like us to say,” Anne said to her mother as she went in to breakfast. “To ‘rubber neck’ is a regular verb in pure owl, for I’ve just seen them do it.”

Before the morning was out, the children had discovered three of the baby owls in a hemlock, and one parent perched in a hackberry close to her stone-fence dining room, probably waiting for supper time, as the table was then occupied by the little day birds that hopped about fearlessly, as if relying upon Anne and the bright sunlight for protection, for little Oo-oo is a true night owl.

After Anne had searched the orchard for the nest, and given it up in despair, Tommy found the owl’s home quite by accident. He was hunting for the sixth little owl, and thought he saw it in a pine near the house. Not being daunted by pine gum, he had nearly reached the top of the tree, which was bushy instead of pointed, as the leader had been snapped off in a sleet storm, and several branches were struggling to replace it. Suddenly he called to Anne in great excitement, for there, in the bushy place, resting on the thick stump of the broken tree-top, was the owl’s nest, not fifty feet from Anne’s window.

It was not much of a nest, to be sure, merely a collection of sticks and matted pine needles, but that the six owlets had spent the weeks between hatching and flying in it, was proved by the bits of bones, fur, and beetle shells with which it was littered.

Of course Anne had to go and look, and later on they coaxed Miss Letty up too, for it was quite easy climbing, if you didn’t mind the stickiness. As they all came down again, who should come in but Mr. Hugh to return a book. Miss Letty shook hands carelessly, without looking at him, thereby mischievously transferring a goodly share of pine gum from her palm to his; but though he looked surprised, there was nothing for him to do but laugh, and it somewhat broke the stiffness that was always between them.

Just then a pitiful howl led the party toward the long grass below the pines. A strange noise indeed, nothing less than Waddles howling with pain. He had found, and tried to retrieve, the sixth little owl, that had dropped from its perch into the long grass, and the owlet had seized him by the nose with its six talons, using its beak in the meantime.Anne, remembering her last night’s experience, drew back. Tommy foolishly cried “sic-em” in anticipation of a fight. Miss Letty would have grasped the bird if Mr. Hugh had not been quicker, giving it a little rap above the beak that made it loosen its hold and flop down in the grass, where it sat with wings partly raised and snapping beak, the picture of baby rage, while Waddles drew back and eyed it ruefully, head on one side.

Anne’s father, seeing what was happening, ran for his camera and took a picture of the group before Waddles had recovered from his astonishment, and put himself to bed in his kennel both wiser and sadder. Moreover the twins did not spoil this negative.

“I think your Magic Spectacles need cleaning, little daughter,” said Anne’s father, laughing, when she told him of the near-by nest and how no one had even suspected that an owl family was in the garden, after all their efforts to attract little Oo-oo with boxes and ready-made nooks.

“Waddles drew back and eyed it ruefully.”

“The moral of that is,” said Mr. Hugh, pausing as he was telling Miss Letty of a compound that would take pine gum off white duck skirts, “don’t try to manage wild birds. Keep dogs, be liberal with their table board, and watch out; the birds will do the rest.”

Clyx.com