Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/185

Rh They waited until he returned to the step, and then, with a stealthy tread, Bess retired  through the kitchen and was out of the house  grounds when a small gray body rushed madly  past her, and then returned to caper about her,  leaving an occasional dusty foot-mark on her  new gown.

“Bad Fuzz!” she scolded. “Fuzz must go right back!” But Fuzz would neither go of  himself, nor let her pick him up to carry him. So she walked back to the house, saying to herself,—

“Well, I don’t mind my call, but I do hate to be late at Rob’s, when I’ve constantly tried to impress on those boys that they must be prompt  at engagements. However, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’ must be changed to suit the will of a small imp of a puppy.”

As she entered the house. Fuzz, with a skill that would do credit to a civil engineer, at the  very least, took up his position at such a vantage point that he commanded an unobstructed  view of both modes of exit, and sat watching  them with an unblinking steadiness. Bess waited for a long quarter of an hour, hoping