Part 54

Oh, she was just tired, she said in reply to his anxious question. She had been to the club to sell eggs.

"They must have been mighty fine eggs," he said, his eyes twinkling kindly, "for you to dress up so. You must have toted 'em in your hands, too, for you forgot your basket."

She sank into a chair, looking up helplessly at him.

"Sit down, Jim," she said. Then she went on: "I never meant to tell you, Jim. I tried--I tried to buy him back."

"Buy him?"

"Yes, old Prince."

"Why, Mary, I thought I told you--he give me two hundred and fifty dollars."

"I know. I offered him what he gave."

"You--you done what?"

She smiled a little at the amazement in his face, but her voice trembled as she made her confession. For ten years she had been saving up on chickens and eggs, a quarter here, a half-dollar there. In secret she had dreamed and planned. They would have new furniture, she had thought, when the house was theirs--new furniture and a parlour. She had meant to surprise him, not to let him know till it came. She had the furniture picked out in a catalogue.

"Jim," she concluded, "I've saved up two hundred and fifty-four dollars and twenty cents!"

His arm was about her shoulders. "Poor gal," he said. "She would have give it all up for me and Prince. Now, now--don't cry. It's all the same--you tried."

She wiped her eyes on her apron and looked at him.

"I saw last night how hard hit you was. I never knew till then just how much store you set on Prince. And I never knew how much I thought of him, for what you love, I love. I made up my mind then, Jim. After dinner I went to the club. I had to wait a long time, for he was out hunting. When he came in I told him I'd give him what he gave you, and four dollars more. Jim, I thought he understood, he looked so kind. He made me set down there in the big room. Then, Jim, I told him--told him how it was with us."

Jim's face grew suddenly stern. "You told him that?"

She nodded.

"And he turned you down?"

"Oh, he was nice enough, as nice as if I was his mother. He came out on the porch with me; he wanted to send me home. But he said he didn't feel like selling him--selling old Prince; that it was a bargain between you and him. Jim, when he turned back, I went round the club house. He was chained to a kennel. He knew me, Jim. He thought I had come after him!"

She was crying outright now, there beside her cold stove, and wiping her eyes on her apron.

"Well," said Jim solemnly, "I've hunted with many a man. I never knew one to be white in the field and black outside before."

They ate a silent supper. They went into the bedroom before the fire. Above the mantel was a picture of a dog pointing, over the bed another of a dog retrieving. And in Jim's mind was another of old Prince sitting off at a distance like the gentleman he was, and a man on the log at his own side eating Mary's lunch.

"God Almighty!" he said to himself.

Out in the night came the roar of the Florida Limited. It whistled once long and melodiously, then twice in short staccatos. That meant passengers for the club or passengers from the club for the train. Maybe, right now, old Prince was waiting on the station platform in the glare of the headlight, wondering what it all meant. Maybe by to-morrow he would be hundreds of miles away.

Jim rose, picked up the bucket, and stepped out into the cold moonlight. Even on a little trip like this Prince had always come with him. He could imagine he saw him now, sitting on his haunches out there in the yard, waiting for the water to be drawn. He had comforted himself with the thought that Gordon would be kind to Prince, and now----

"A man that would treat a woman like that," he said bitterly, "would kick a dog!"

He turned back to the house, his head bowed. As he went up the steps he seemed to hear up the misty moonlit road that led to the club a faint tinkle like that made by a running dog's collar. He stood listening for a moment. The ghost of a sound had ceased. He went inside and closed the door behind him.

Mary sat by the fire above the empty rug, her chin in her hand. He placed the bucket on the stand and washed his face, smoothing back with a big wet hand his heavy, iron-gray hair. He sat down and began to undress in silence. He had taken off one shoe when he heard it again--the tinkle, unmistakable this time, of a running dog's collar.

"What's that, Jim?" demanded Mary.