Читать книгу Dogtown. Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople онлайн

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Anne had insisted almost from her babyhood that one of her ancestors must have been an Indian, so fond she was of wild ways and things, and this liking did not decrease as she grew of an age to crave friends of her own race.

She still tramped about the near-by woods, but Miss Letty was often her companion. Also Miss Letty was timorous and made a point of insisting that Lumberlegs go with them. This he often did, and would either follow close or sit quite still on guard for any length of time; while Waddles and Happy would perhaps strike a trail and dash off in full cry, thereby disturbing the very things that Anne had come to watch. One day, after they had in this way scattered a quail brood that Anne had hunted from the time that Bobwhite announced his arrival, until she found the dear little chicks huddled in a leafy hollow among wild blackberry canes on the orchard edge, she felt provoked, and did not allow Waddles to go to walk with her for almost a week. “Mistress,” said he, his eyes growing deep and luminous with reproach, “I’ve always been with you until now; have you forgotten all those fine days before Tommy came, and there was only you and I? Don’t you remember I was with you when we met the miller’s bull, and he was so angry because, though he tolled the bell at Cock Robin’s funeral, they didn’t ask him to the feast, and how I followed you and Obi when you went for the wood-duck’s nest, though I was very sick, and that day when Ko-ko-ko-ho showed us the way to where the last rattlesnake was, and the night that we went up on the hill and I barked you awake just when you thought you were at the Forest Circus? What has happened, mistress? Are you tired of me, or can that Lumberlegs show you better paths than I do? Though you gave my tail and back legs half to Tommy when he was born, I’ve always used them to follow you and tell you I was glad just the same as ever, but now you love Lumberlegs best.”