Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington

Author:Booth Tarkington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620118498
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter Thirteen

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It was a pretty morning, two weeks after Julia's Dance; and blue and lavender shadows, frayed with mid-summer sunshine, waggled gayly across the grass beneath the trees of the tiny orchard, but trembled with timidity as they hurried over the abnormal surfaces of Mrs. Silver as she sat upon the steps of the "back porch." Her right hand held in security one end of a leather leash; the other end of the leash was fastened to a new collar about the neck of an odd and fascinating dog. Seated upon the brick walk at her feet, he was regarding her with a gravity that seemed to discomfort her. She was unable to meet his gaze, and constantly averted her own whenever it furtively descended to his. In fact, her expression and manner were singular, denoting embarrassment, personal hatred, and a subtle bedazzlement. She could not look at him, yet could not keep herself from looking at him. There was something here that arose out of the depths of natural character; it was intrinsic in the two personalities, that is to say; and was in addition to the bitterness consequent upon a public experience, just past, which had been brought upon Mrs. Silver partly by the dog's appearance (in particular the style and colour of his hair) and partly by his unprecedented actions in her company upon the highway.

She addressed him angrily, yet with a profound uneasiness.

"Dog!" she said. "You ain't feelin' as skittish as whut you did, li'l while ago, is you? My glory! I dess would like to lay my han' to you' hide once, Mister! I take an' lam you this livin' minute if I right sho' you wouldn't take an' bite me."

She jerked the leash vindictively, upon which the dog at once "sat up" on his haunches, put his forepaws together above his nose, in an attitude of prayer, and looked at her inscrutably from under the great bang of hair that fell like a black chrysanthemum over his forehead. Beneath this woolly lambrequin his eyes were visible as two garnet sparks of which the coloured woman was only too nervously aware. She gasped.

"Look-a-here, dog, who's went an' ast you to take an' pray fer 'em?"

He remained motionless and devout.

"My goo'niss!" she said to him. "If you goin' keep on thisaway whut you is been, I'm goin' to up an' go way from here, ri' now!" Then she said a remarkable thing. "Listen here, Mister! I ain' never los' no gran' child, an' I ain' goin' 'dop' no stranger fer one, neither!"

The explanation rests upon the looks and manners of him whom she addressed. This dog was of a kind at the top of dog kingdoms. His size was neither insignificant nor great; probably his weight would have been between a fourth and a third of a St. Bernard's. He had the finest head for adroit thinking that is known among dogs; and he had an athletic body, the forepart muffled and lost in a mass

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