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

CHAPTER XII THE SIXLETS

Anne was unusually drowsy the next morning, because she had not gone to sleep until quite late. Every time she began to sail off to the pleasant island where the Land of Nod is located, the new camera bobbed up and pushed her ashore again, and finally when she really drifted beyond its reach, she had a dim idea that it was skipping after her, on its long thin legs, like a water spider.

The Sixlets.At any rate she stumbled about in a most unusual fashion, forgot that Jack Waddles had slept indoors for the first time and must be let out early, until Waddles came in and literally dug her out of bed as if she had been a woodchuck in its hole, and ran baying in front of her to the hall door. Next she almost overflowed the bath-tub by filling it so full that there was no room for the bather, and finally found herself sitting by the window wondering whether putting your stockings on wrong side out was, as Mary Ann said, a sign of good luck, or merely stupidity on the part of the wearer. Just as she had decided that she would leave them on to see what happened, and securely tied her tan colored shoes, Tommy came running up and began to dance and shout under the window in a state of wild excitement.

Now Tommy was a confirmed “lie a-bed,” and to see him out before breakfast was a cause of wonder in itself; but when Anne heard the words, “Happy—tiny little puppies—bit Jack Waddles,” she simply jumped into her petticoats and nearly fell out of the window as she fastened her collar, calling, “Puppies! Where? Whose?”

“In the nursery kennel, ours and Happy’s, of course. Jackie Waddles wants to lick them and she won’t let him, and Baldy wouldn’t let me have but one look because he says light isn’t good for them and they’re ever so little and queer like Pinkie’s Guinea pigs.”

“How many are there, twins like Jack and Jill?” asked Anne, again nearly popping out of the window, while she tied a blue ribbon at the top of her hair, and a pink one at the end of her braid in her excitement.

Tommy darted off to consult Baldy who was bringing in the vegetables, and returned holding up to his sister’s view one hand and the thumb of the other as he counted—“One—two—three—four—five—six—there’s sixlets, Anne, and Baldy says that three’s girls and three’s boys!”

“Then there are three pairs of twins,” said Anne, coming out of the side door. “Of course Jackie’s nose is broken, the poor dear! See him look in my face as if he didn’t understand why his mother should turn him off so. Never mind, when little brothers grow up you will have great sport playing with them, and seeing they don’t get in mischief, and meantime you shall be assistant house fourfoot, sleep on the front door-mat, and ‘watch out’ for your living with papa Waddles.”

After breakfast the entire family, augmented by Miss Jule, who had stopped in on her way to the village, went to see the pups, and though Happy was evidently pleased at the attention, she would not let any one but Anne come very near, and kept herself between the visitors and the precious “sixlets.”

“If you take my advice,” said Miss Jule to Anne, “you will have Baldy sweep all that loose straw out; it is hard for the pups to move about in, and by and by, when their eyes begin to open, the sharp ends will stick into them. I’ll send you down a barrel of prepared sawdust. If you sprinkle it an inch thick on the floor of the bedroom part, and then lay a breadth of clean old straw matting on top, it will make the nicest sort of a bed, and if it grows cold of nights before they are old enough to live in the cow barn, I’ll lend you one of my little kennel stoves with a protector around it.

“Then until they are two weeks old, when their eyes will not only be opened, but they can really see with them, you must care for Happy entirely yourself, give her food and water, see that the door of her yard is open so that she can get in and out at will and keep herself clean, and do not let anybody handle the pups, for as soon as the news gets about, Pinkie, Jessie, Sophie, Charlie, and Jack will be here in a flock, and it’s as uncomfortable for pups to be loved to death as to die any other way.”

Miss Jule thoughtfully asked Tommy to ride on to the village with her, and then go home and help her pick crab-apples for jelly that Miss Letty had promised to make. It was almost impossible for him to keep his hands off the little creatures, and the chance of climbing and shaking the crab-apple trees and picking up the shining red fruit would hardly have been a counter attraction if it had not been capped with the idea of helping Miss Letty with the jelly. The skimmings of a jelly pot are very good when spread thick on thin bread, and the idea flashed through Tommy’s head that as it was Miss Letty’s first jelly-making she would be very apt to skim deep, and the results would be plentiful.

Baldy arranged the house as Miss Jule suggested, that afternoon, also making a little window at the top of the bed corner for ventilation, and Anne established the “dining room,” as she called it, in the front half, where the food and water dishes could have a place clean and apart. Here for two weeks dwelt the “sixlets,” having no separate names or identity, except in the eyes of Anne, who knew them apart before they were anything but six insatiable mouths.

Middle September brought some very warm days with it, and with all the doors wide open Happy moved to the dining room, where the air was better, and was at home to any admiring friends who chose to call, though she did not yet care to have the puppies touched, and had much more confidence in grown people than in children.

The pups were a source of endless wonder to Anne, for though she had watched Jack and Jill grow up, she had not seen much of them during the first two or three weeks of their life, as they had been born in the barn at a time when she was very busy with her lessons, and had not been brought to live in the nursery kennel until their eyes were open. The sixlets, moreover, were smaller, seemingly of a daintier build, and gave promise of being true beagles, and not taking after their unacknowledged grandfather, the foxhound.

At first their faces were blunt and heavy, and their rounded ears too thick to turn over and droop; but their fur was of exquisite softness, and the prettily rounded paws and fore legs looked as if they were encased in silky mousquetaire gloves, while the pads on the soles were full and pink, and seemed by far too delicate to be used as shoes. Cleaner, sweeter little things it would be impossible to imagine, for as soon as Happy finished feeding and polishing number six, she would begin again with number one.

When they were two weeks old Happy gradually took more exercise. The pups gained their footing and began to shuffle about, so Baldy devised a day nursery where they might have a change and sunlight, as well as give the nursery kennel a chance to be aired and swept every day. This day nursery consisted of four wide boards, about four feet long, nailed together to form a bottomless box. It was light enough for Anne to move it about easily, according to whether a sunny or a shady spot was desirable; this also secured a fresh grass carpet at all times, when the ground was dry.

No sooner were the pups allowed to leave the kennel than Jack Waddles came from the south piazza, where he had been moping and showing all the symptoms of a severe case of that painful but not fatal disease called “nose out of joint,” and made himself not only their guardian, but almost foster-mother. At first Happy seemed to suspect his motives, but they soon came to an understanding, and it was a regulation thing for her to go for her morning exercise as soon as he came from the house. Not only would Jack get into the pen and quiet the pups if they felt lonely, but he often gave them their morning bath as well; and Anne had both Miss Jule and Mr. Hugh as witnesses to the fact that he once washed the whole six, one by one, moving each into a different part of the enclosure as he finished it, then collected them, and cuddled them to sleep, when their mother had remained away over long, and they were yelping.

One pup, a serious looking little chap, with the longest ears of all, and a quaint, old-fashioned hound face, was his favourite, and he would nose him out of the day nursery, take him to a sunny place, and there mount guard over him, lying nose to nose, with an expression of mingled love and pride, so that in these days Jack was always called Big Brother.

“I wonder if Happy will try to take them into the cooler the same as she did Jack and Jill?” said Anne to Miss Jule one day, when she was telling her of some newly discovered wonder in the pups.

“Not at this season of the year; she is more likely to search out an oven for them. Where are they? I see they are not in their day nursery.”

“Then Tommy must have taken them out and forgotten them, for they can’t climb over the board yet; at least I think not,” said Anne, running hither and thither. They were not in the kennel, or any of the piazzas, neither back of the lilac hedge, nor in any of the many places that the dogs choose for sunning themselves. Tommy stoutly denied that he had taken them out, but added, “I shouldn’t think they would have liked to stay where you put them this morning, for it was right under the edge of the big apple tree, and every minute apples fell down plunk.”A look in the day nursery proved this to be perfectly true, for it contained half a dozen sizable apples.

Anne was worried, for though it was now certain that the pups had gotten out by themselves, no one had seen either Happy or her family.

“They are safe enough somewhere, though it is hard to tell just where she has taken them,” said Miss Jule. “Happy evidently was not satisfied with the location of the nursery to-day, and she is teaching you a lesson. I don’t blame her, either; for you left them under a cannonade of apples, in a sharp draught, as well.”

Anne’s father and mother, Baldy, and also Mary Anne came out and joined the hunt, Anne even insisting that Baldy should pull out some of the stones where the entrance to Jack and Jill’s cooling house had been.

After a while the elders grew tired, and went into the garden-house where Anne’s mother often brewed tea these cool afternoons, for, as she said, Happy would soon come for her supper, and then they could trace the pups.

This was too inactive a method to suit Anne and Tommy, so they continued to rummage in every nook and corner that was big enough to hold a hen’s egg. Suddenly they set up a shout at the same time, and the tea drinkers hurrying out beheld a funny sight. There were several hot-bed frames set against the stone wall. In the spring they were used for forcing early vegetables, and starting the flower seeds, while a few plants remained in them here and there. One part where the sun shone brightest had been cleared and sown with the fall planting of pansies, which were just above ground. In this, surrounded by the sixlets, sat Happy! The sixlets were also having afternoon tea, with their fat little stomachs resting on the hot earth that their mother had thoroughly scratched up to make it the softer for them.

“Well, I think what I said has come true,” said Miss Jule, leading the general laugh in which Anne’s mother joined rather feebly, on account of the destruction of the pansies. “Happy seems to have chosen the nearest approach to an oven that she could find. See, Anne, there is one underneath all the others, the pup with the dark ear, and that poor thing always seems to be underneath. What is her name?”

“We haven’t named them yet, but we are going to to-morrow, because it will be their three weeks old birthday. Oh, do look quick at that one with the black and tan head, she is really scratching her ear with her hind paw, the darling!”

All this time Waddles was acting in a most strange manner. He had sometimes played with Jack and Jill, always came when they cried or seemed in trouble, and literally mounted guard over the nursery kennel, from out of his fastness under the cellar door. But now the sight of the sixlets seemed to fill him with terror, and he would not walk around that side of the house while they were in sight, though he continued to be very polite to Happy, and allow her to rob his food dish at her sweet will. He acted very much as a man might when his spouse is too busy with a large family to give him any attention—he went off with his men friends, Mr. Wolf, Quick, Tip, and Colin, and hunted sometimes until early morning, much to Anne’s disgust and the spoiling of his well-kept appearance; for Waddles had always been a dandy in his bachelor days.

These were busy times for Anne’s camera; but, as her father told her, she was beginning with almost the most difficult things that can be photographed—living animals, which must be caught by snap-shots. And in order to succeed with these, one must have skill as well as experience to know what it is possible to take and what never can be caught at all.

Anne had succeeded in making a very good portrait of her mother sitting under the trees reading, also one of Waddles guarding his meat-dish; though she wasted enough developer upon them to have served a dozen plates. Thus encouraged, she began to snap wildly at the puppies, getting some very laughable results, and learning that if she was not going to spend her whole year’s pocket money in a single week, she must take better aim before she fired.

One plate had only two pairs of back legs on it, another a grotesque head of Happy, who had been facing the camera at such close range that she was all head and her body dwindled away to nothing. Another one, of the puppies gathered around their dish learning to drink, was a hazy mass of wagging tails, and so on; but the oddest picture of all was of Mr. Hugh bowing to Miss Letty as they met him on the road. Why it was no one could tell, but it made him look so like a jumping-jack that no one could look at it without laughing; that is, no one but Mr. Hugh, who flushed up and said that Anne had been cheated in the lens.

“No, it’s a good eye; father says so,” put in matter-of-fact Tommy, who usually championed Anne and her possessions. “It just saw you that way and put it down.”

“If other people see me that way, I don’t wonder that they always make fun of me, and don’t like me,” said Mr. Hugh, looking unthinkingly toward where Miss Letty was playing tennis with Anne and a good-looking college fellow named Varley who was a chum of Pinkie Scott’s big brother; for Mr. Hugh was too practical and slow to take a joke quickly, which was the one defect that kept him from being altogether charming.

“I don’t think looks matters much. If you just like things, you see ’em all right. I loved Lily dog, but she was really ever so homely, Anne says, lots worse than your picture, and I kept Miss Letty for my sweetheart all that week the poison ivy made her eyes little and buried her nose,” he added, swelling with boastful pride at his fidelity. Thus did Tommy manage to alternately warm and chill the friendship between his two friends.

At three weeks the pups were not only fascinating from their baby ways but for their intelligence as well; and in the matter of points, Squire Burley pronounced them quite remarkable for their age, Miss Jule adding that it was a well-known fact that beagles developed more quickly than almost any other breed of dog; while the fact that they could lap milk nicely was a great help to Happy in keeping her larder well filled, for catering for one pair of twins was wholly different from supplying three pairs.

They had just been frisking about their dish, rolling and playing, when Anne and Tommy came out from breakfast, bent upon the important business of naming them.

“Ouch! their teeth have come, and sharp as fishes’, too!” exclaimed Tommy, who had experience both with fish-teeth and fish-hooks, quickly withdrawing an inquisitive finger.

Naming the Pups.“Don’t tease them,” cautioned Anne; “if we are to name them, it must be done properly, so that they won’t feel sorry about it when they grow up. I want to give them real names we can call them, and not have them registered under one name, like Cadence, and always called another.”“Try to call them something that you can shorten,” said Anne’s father, stopping on his way to the dark house. He, too, had been lured from the study many times to take pictures of the puppies; but he refused to show the results until they were properly finished.

“We might call them after birds,” said Anne, who had been looking through the trees down to the distant meadows, where many birds were flocking before starting on their autumn travels.

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Tommy, quickly. “Jay’d be a first-rate name for one,” he added, as one of those bold-talking sneak-thieves called overhead.

Anne laughed, in spite of not knowing exactly why, saying, “I don’t think Jay will quite do; because when people are stupid and disagreeable at the same time, and do not know it, people often call them Jays.”

Just then a sweet note came from the field,—a real April voice,—saying, “Spring o’ the year.” “It’s a Meadow Lark,” said Anne, “and I will name this dear little fellow with the even white face mark and black tail spot after it, and call him Lark for short, because I’m going to keep him for our very own.”

“Aren’t we going to keep them all?” pleaded Tommy, looking up with beseeching eyes, while his chin quivered.

“Not all, and perhaps only two, one for each of us; father said so last night. There are too many; but we may keep them all winter, so that they will be strong and well-grown before they go to the homes Miss Jule will find for them, or perhaps Mr. Hugh will keep them himself.”

“Let’s call another Bobwhite,—this boy with the very white face,” said Anne, a moment later, after each pup had been held up in turn to see if its face suggested anything.

“Yes, that’ll be fine; ’cause don’t you remember that one that used to come over here to feed, and brought the little ones one morning? Now it’s my turn,” said Tommy, picking up the prettiest of the three females, who had lovely even tan markings on the head, a white nose, and the manners of a finished coquette. “I’ll name her—I’ll name her—” he said, hesitating, and looking up into the trees, as no name occurred to him.

“Phoebe, Phoebe,” called that demure fly-catcher, balancing on the telephone wire.“Yes, I’ll call her Phoebe,” said Tommy, in a tone of relief; and Anne thought it the very thing.

“Now this one, Jack Waddles’s pet, and we will be through with the boys.”

“You name him,” said Tommy, having found the matter more of a puzzle than a pleasure.

“There is a lovely western sparrow, with a yellow vest and black cravat, that I’ve seen in the museum, and its name is Dickcissel. I’ll name him that, and we can call him Dick,” said Anne, after several more minutes spent in thinking. “That makes four after birds, so we might name the others for something else. This one that’s all white but one ear spot, we could call Blanche, only it’s hard to say.”

“Lily’s nicer. I’ll let you call it after my dear old doggie,” said Tommy, as if conferring a great favour.

“I don’t think she’s going to stay so very white,” replied Anne, after examining the pup’s coat critically. “I think she will have black and brown tick marks like her grandmother.”

“Then call her Tiger Lily, they are all spotted,” cried Tommy, triumphantly, which tickled Anne so that she hugged him for his wit; and Tiger Lily the pup was, and lived to be a great hunter.

“Now for the last, the soft, fat, dark one. Somehow she reminds me of a comfortable coloured person. I know, we’ll call her Dinah, the very thing! and Di will do for short.” So the last pup was duly named and put down, and Anne proposed that they should rest their heads by wheeling up to the Hilltop Kennels to tell Miss Jule about the names, when Tommy, who was looking after the pups who had scampered away on being released, grasped Anne’s arm and pointed after them. Wonder of wonders! Phoebe was holding Bob by the hind leg, while fat Dinah played leap-frog over his back in a clumsy but perfectly serious manner, doing it not once but many times, and she was only three weeks old!

In the matter of training and education it makes a deal of difference to the mother as to whether her family consists of few or many, and Anne learned many new points in dog law during the next few weeks.

Happy continued to feed and wash the sixlets until they were about two months old, but she did not play with them, as she had with Jack and Jill, except upon rare occasions, but left them to teach each other and learn by experience, while she took a nap, near by enough to hear if anything went wrong, wearing when awake the expression of being good-naturedly bored.

It was Big Brother who threw bones in the air for them, and gave them their first taste of meat by bringing home a young woodchuck, and dragging it into their midst; when they sprang upon it with a fierceness that seemed almost to frighten gentle Jack, and a tug-of-war ensued in earnest, which ended in the woodchuck’s tail giving way and Dinah turning a back somersault, it was saucy Phoebe who dragged away the prize, and the others licked their lips with gusto.

“Never mind,” said Miss Jule, “when it comes time for the hunting Happy will let no one teach them but herself.”

If Jack and Jill had been time eaters, what could be said of the sixlets? Not only did Anne and Tommy spend almost all their hours out of school playing with the pups on the sunny slope, but their father had cut his chin several times from watching them out of his dressing-room window when he was shaving; their mother sewed the buttons on the wrong side of Anne’s pinafore, and Mary Anne poured kerosene into her lap instead of into the lamp, from the same cause.

On Guard.

The Hilltop people also were interested, in spite of their many dogs; and Miss Jule, Miss Letty, Mr. Hugh, and Squire Burley all happened in together the afternoon that Anne’s father had finished printing and mounting his puppy pictures, and they begged so hard for copies of them, that he said he should have to make them into an album and let them draw lots for it. While Anne begged for a pair to frame, one of the sixlets all together, four in a basket, and two on the garden bench, and the other of Dick, Bobwhite, Dinah, and Phoebe in a wheelbarrow, with Jack Waddles standing guard like a veritable policeman.

“I like this picture best,” said Mr. Hugh, picking up a small photograph of Miss Letty feeding Miss Jule’s kennel dogs; “it’s very lifelike.”

“Why, I took that,” said Anne, delighted; “and I’ve done a lot more pictures of the kennels beside.”

“I’ll tell you what to do,” said Miss Jule. “Take all the Dogtown pictures you can, no larger than this, mind, and we’ll make them into albums and give them to Mrs. Carr to sell, together with the knick-knacks she makes, up at Robin Hood’s Inn to help along her fund, and I’ll pay for the materials.”

“It will be great fun,” agreed Anne; “but what is her fund for? I haven’t heard of it.”Miss Jule waited for Mr. Hugh to speak; but he turned his back and stared out of the window, so she answered: “Mrs. Carr wants to have a little money every year to help what she calls ‘some decent puir bodies,’ who have dogs that they love, and can feed, but for whom the license money is a stumbling-block.

“You all know how near she came to losing Laddie, her collie; and really might have if Letty’s bicycle hadn’t providentially broken down, Anne lost her way in the back field, and the barbed wire fence been where it was. So Mr. Hugh lets her sell little things she knits to the picnic people who go to the Inn for tea, and he will see that she only pays for worthy dogs.”

Mr. Hugh expected to hear Miss Letty’s ringing laugh, but he didn’t.

“Oh, I hope I shall be able to make a great many albums,” said Anne, stretching wide her arms to express size, as she used to, when, as a little girl, she opened her arms to the sky and said she wished she could hug all outdoors.

“I’m sorry Lily’s dead. I’d have let you take her and me together, and you could have charged a lot,” said Tommy, innocently; and then added at random, in the polite silence that followed, “Say, Miss Letty, if you loved anything, would you care if it looked ugly or like a jumping-jack in a picture?”

“Why, of course not,” said Miss Letty, innocently, not looking in Mr. Hugh’s direction, which was well, as she might have guessed, for he was as red as a beet, being the only one who understood at what Tommy was driving.

Miss Jule, scenting something, suggested that they go out and present the pups with the collars that Mr. Hugh had bought for them but had seemingly forgotten. This pulled him together again, and he handed Anne a parcel containing six dainty chamois-lined collars. Three were red for the girls, and three blue for the boys, and each was ornamented with a pair of small round nickel bells.

“How lovely of you!” said Anne, going up to give him a frank kiss of thanks, a hand on each shoulder.

“They’ll keep the dogs from straying away and getting lost. I always put bells on my hounds’ first collars,” he said, quite at his ease again.

“By the way,” he added, stooping, “what are those letters printed on the dish the pups are feeding from?”

“‘Drink, Puppy, Drink.’ They come made that way; and I think the pups understand, for they do it all day long,” and this time Mr. Hugh joined in the laugh.

That evening when Anne went to put away the dog pictures, much to her vexation she could not find the one of Miss Letty feeding the kennel dogs, and she so wanted to give it to Mr. Hugh.

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