Chapter 03 I find a second friend

CHAPTER III
I FIND A SECOND FRIEND
Istill kept to the Drive, and trotted along well up into the hundredth streets. My plan was to have some one find me with the collar on, which undoubtedly had an address on it—but I must not be found near enough to Mr. Boston’s home to be returned that night, for I might be ignominiously turned out into the darkness of the street.
Now for another poor person. If a rich one found me, into an automobile or a taxi would I go, and presto!—the house of the indignant dog I had robbed.
I am not defending my action. I was a naughty, mischievous dog to steal another dog’s collar. I might even be called a thief, but for the fact that I intended to return the collar with me inside it, when I trusted to my native wit to do the rest.
I had better leave the west side, and turn toward the east. I dashed up the hill past the Home for Incurables, made for the big College of New York that I remembered from my former visit, slipped down the slope behind it, and found myself in the kind of district I wanted.
Here was a nice unfashionable avenue—New York certainly has a great number of wide streets—plenty[38] of noise, and many people walking about, lots of well-lighted shops with everything under the sun in them, and a good many persons with kind faces.
I avoided the very young, the very old—there weren’t many of these, anybody that was too gay or too dull, or too dirty and poor-looking. I wouldn’t mind poor people so much, if they would keep clean. The most of them are so careless in their personal habits, that no self-respecting dog wants to live with them.
I chose a respectable-looking coloured woman who was coming out of a nice-looking meat shop. Her shoes were bright and neat, and by the look of her hands, I judged she was a washerwoman. She had been out working by the day, and she was going to have a good hot meat supper in which I would join her.
Sidling close up to her, I whined gently and held up a beseeching paw.
She gazed down at me with a lovely benevolent expression. “Why, doggie,” she said, “what’s the matter?”
I squeezed a little closer, and licked her clean, cotton dress.
I am not considered really beautiful, but I am a very well-bred dog, and most women say I have a nice way with me when I choose.
“Poor little fellow,” she said, “I believe you’re lost, and I just happened to see you.”
I didn’t say anything to this, though I might have told her that most things are arranged. They don’t happen.
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“But perhaps you knew me,” she went on. “Maybe I’ve worked for the lady that owns you.”
Maybe she had. I didn’t know.
“And you smelt my tracks and followed me,” she continued. “I’ve heard that some dogs are mighty clever. Bless your little heart. You want me to take you to your home. Come right along with Ellen, and we’ll telephone to the address I see on your collar. I’ve just got a nickel left.”
I felt badly to have her spend money on me, still it does us all good to be benevolent—dogs and human beings too—so I said nothing, and followed her to the telephone booth in a drug store.
I thought I would die laughing to hear her telephoning. “Is this Riverside twenty twenty?” she asked.
Yes, it was.
“Oh! ma’am, I’ve found your dog.”
Of course I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but I guessed what it was. When she said, “But your name is on the collar,” I listened anxiously for the next.
“But,” said my nice coloured woman, “doesn’t the collar go with the dog?”
Something else followed, then my Ellen said, “I did notice it was too big for him. It’s way down over his shoulders. What do you say?”
A long silence came after this. Ellen was listening intently. Finally she hung up the receiver, and looked down at me with a mystified air. “Poor lady—she seems all upset. She said something about a dog[40] thief’s dog, and a collar being stolen. Perhaps she has two dogs.”
Perhaps she is going to have, I thought, but of course I said nothing.
“We’ll go see her in the morning,” said Ellen. “I have to work near there, and now we’ll go home, and have some supper.”
I was not too tired to jump up, and lick her kind, old fingers. Then she led the way to her home, which was in an apartment-house on this same broad avenue. We tugged up six flights of stairs, and while we were going up she said, “I s’pose you’ve been accustomed to elevators, little dog. Poor folks can’t have all the nice things the rich have.” There was nothing to be said to this, except to give her silent sympathy, and stand back while she unlocked her door, and let herself into a neat little set of rooms. She had two bed-rooms and a kitchen, and her son, who was a sidewalk usher in a fashionable hotel, lived with her.
The tiny kitchen was cute. It had a gas stove, a table, two rocking-chairs and two windows. It was just big enough to turn round in. The son, Robert Lee, came up the stairs just after we did, and she hastened to tell him my story.
He laughed heartily, throwing back his head, and showing every tooth he possessed—those teeth of negroes aren’t as white as they look. It’s the contrast of their dark skin that makes them seem to have whiter teeth than white people.
He slipped the collar off my neck, and laid it on a shelf. “It’s a bull-terrier’s collar,” he said, “and this[41] fellow is a fox-terrier, and ought to have a narrower one. I know, ’cause I see the rich folks’ dogs at the hotel. Some one has slipped the wrong collar on this fellow. Yes, take him to that address in the morning. Maybe there’ll be a reward.”
This pleased me, and I licked his nice, dark hands. Then we had a dandy supper, and I had a good long drink of fresh water—my favourite beverage. I don’t care much for milk. While Ellen washed the dishes, Robert Lee sat in one of the rocking-chairs and played on his banjo while he sang to her about “Mighty Lak a Rose,” and “I Want to Go to Tokio,” and “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.”
After a while, he put away his banjo, and we all went to bed.
I slept on the old coloured woman’s couch. She started me on a piece of carpet by the gas stove, but as soon as she was asleep, I sneaked up and lay beside her feet. I saw no earthly reason why I should not do so. I had licked my paws quite clean, and I had no fleas, and I loved a comfortable bed high up, and hated a draughty floor.
In the morning very early, for charwomen must work, while ladies sleep, my nice Ellen got up, roused her son who was sleeping the pig sleep of all healthy young males, and prepared a nice, smelly breakfast—bacon and warmed-over sausage, and two fried eggs, and hot rolls and perfectly scrumptious coffee with real cream from a bottle outside the window.
Rich people say that working people don’t live well. Poor people that have brains enough to work,[42] can live well if they choose, and they mostly do choose. I think they have lots more fun than rich people. They don’t whine and snarl so much, and they laugh harder and oftener, and cry louder and longer.
Ellen would have been frightfully bored on Riverside Drive, or Fifth or Park Avenues. She was one of the happiest women I ever saw, and Robert Lee, her son, whistled all the time. He had a good mother, and a nice molasses shade of girl whose picture he carried in his heart pocket, and he had good wages and plenty to eat, and no enemies, and he didn’t drink, and he had no heavy social duties.
Well, Ellen had her three cups of coffee, and I had a perfectly stunning feed; then Robert Lee went to do his sidewalk posing in front of his hotel, and finally, about eight o’clock, we took a cross-town street and walked toward Riverside Drive.
I love interesting situations, and it nearly tickled me to death to imagine what was going to happen. Poor old Ellen was so pleased in what she called my pleasure in going home. Some dogs would have run away before they would have faced the lady who thought me the dog of a thief, but I trusted to luck and pressed on.
Ellen had too much sense to put a string on me. I jumped and frisked about her, and that young Boston bull’s collar swung and twisted about my neck. By the way, it was a very valuable collar, with fine imitation turquoises in it.
Finally we emerged upon the Drive. The Hudson[43] was more glorious in the morning sunlight than it had been in the starlight of the night before.
Poor Ellen, I thought to myself, here is a chance to whine. These rich people have everything—the big houses, the fine river, the view of the hills and trees over in New Jersey, but will she complain?—Not a bit of it. Ellen doesn’t care for scenery, and she finds the Drive windy. She likes her snug, warm rooms, and the neighbours of her own position in life.
We entered a specially grand apartment-house with a marble entrance, and plenty of mirrors and palms, and we went up in the elevator to the seventh story. Ellen pressed a bell, and a maid with her cap over one ear opened the door.
She stared at us, and said no one was up.
Ellen wasn’t surprised. She knew the ways of well-to-do white folks.
“I’ll wait,” she said patiently.
We sat down, and waited and waited. The first to appear was the Boston bull. He came yawning out of a bed-room, turned stiff-legged when he smelt me, hipped four times round the swell reception room where we were, then emboldened by my detached air, came up, smelt his collar on my neck, bristled, and closed with me.
As he had too much fat and too little wind, I easily floored him, and such a gurgling—I thought he’d choke to death with rage and fright.
A lovely stout lady in a pretty dressing-gown came flying from one room, and a lean, hard-looking athlete of a man from another.
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“Oh! my precious Beanie,” wailed the lady. Really, the New York women do give their dogs sickening names. This fellow, I learned, was Baked Beans, and he had just about as much waist as a bean.
“Oh! you idiot,” growled the man.
Baked Beans was pretending I had nearly killed him. I sized up my audience, then I walked up to the man, crouched humbly before him, and put a protesting paw on one of his bed-room slippers.
He must have stood six feet four in his pajamas. I threw him one upward glance. He understood.
We dogs divide man and womankind into two classes. Those who understand us, and those who don’t.
He bent over me, slipped the silly collar from my neck, and twisted it thoughtfully round and round in his fingers. Then he began to laugh, and I thought he would never stop.
“Rudolph,” said the lady, who was hugging the bull, “Rudolph, do stop. You get on my nerves. And what do you see to laugh about? A nasty, fighting, street dog bursts into our apartment, bullies poor Beanie, and you admire him for it. I call it brute force. Now, woman, tell me your business.”
Ellen was smiling indulgently. She was a Southern negress, and had infinite indulgence for the whims of fine ladies. She told her story in an honest, straightforward manner, and the man believed her; but the woman didn’t.
“How much do you want?” she asked coldly, when Ellen had finished.
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“You needn’t give me anything, ma’am,” said Ellen sweetly. “It’s a nice morning, and I’ve had a walk before I goes to my work.”
“My dear,” said the gentleman turning to his wife, “you will get cold, go back to bed, and I will arrange this affair.”
“Come, Beanie darling,” said the lady, and she tugged Beanie off in her arms, he looking over her shoulder as if anxious to be in at the death.
The gentleman sat down and asked Ellen to repeat her story. He cross-examined her, then he cross-examined me, asking me questions exactly as if I were a human being.
“This is the crux of the whole matter,” he remarked, “How did that collar get off our dog’s neck to the neck of this strange dog—who, by the way, is a thoroughbred. Our maid said that there seemed to be no man about, only a white dog running.”
The collar had fallen to the floor. I gambolled up to it, ran my head through it, pawed it off, and went back to the man.
“Come up here,” he said patting his knee, and I sprang up, gave him one of my most intelligent glances, and we were friends.
“You rogue,” he said, “you’re a dog of character, and probably a Bohemian.”
“I reckon he’s American, sir,” said Ellen kindly. “He knows all we say to him. I’ll take him, if you don’t want him. I’d like a nice dog.”
The gentleman smiled, and said, “Let him choose.[46] I’ll give him a week’s trial. Now, dog, is it go or stay?”
It was stay, of course. I ran to Ellen, licked her hands and even the face that she bent over me, but I kept looking backward at my new owner.
“You must have something for your trouble,” he murmured, and he went to his room for his purse, and coming back, slipped a bill in her hand. It must have been a big one, for she sneaked a glance at it, then turned back as if to protest.
He waved her toward the door, then he glanced toward his wife’s room, as if he were about to go to it.
“Why anticipate trouble,” he muttered, and signing to me to follow, he entered his own quarters.