Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/407

Rh friends of mine have expressed a wish to see your extraordinary dog. Will you kindly bring him to my house on receipt of this? It might be well to brush that handsome silky coat of his a little. Peter will drive you over. Very truly yours, "To Jonathan Perch, Esq."

But when Jonathan, perplexed but obedient, prepared to get into the victoria, David utterly and magnificently refused. For gods nor men nor master would David ride with Peter Sweeney. The nearest neighbor, who stood on her porch with her baby in her arms, was disappointed to see that Jonathan and David had to walk.

It was not a long walk, however, perhaps half a mile, and the two arrived at Mrs. Mersey's summer home in good spirits, and not more dusty than was to be expected. The lady herself came out on the piazza to meet them. She was dressed in something black, and thin, and elegant, which gave her a slender look, and which to Jonathan's refined taste seemed to qualify her perfectly. He heard the hum of voices in the drawing-room. "My dream!" thought Jonathan. "My dream!"

He stood before his hostess patiently in his old, clean, black clothes, one button sewed on with white thread and two with blue; his cuffless wrists extended from his too short sleeves. David, watchful and anxious, sat stolidly at his master's feet. David felt that the drama of life had gone beyond his comprehension. He sat with one ear up, the other down, as a collie will when he is perplexed.

"Mr. Perch," said the lady, in a voice so low that no one could overhear it, "my man will show you to one of the guest-rooms, where you will find something which you may like to put on before you meet my friends. No. This is no charity, sir. You will have earned them; they will be your own—like David. Oh yes, David may go too. And here— Tickets for seeing David have been sold for a dollar apiece. An audience of sixty people is waiting—if you will be so good—to see some of David's remarkable mathematical feats.

"Allowing something for the new suit," proceeded Mrs. Mersey, with the tone of a philanthropist who, however unorganized her impulses, sometimes had views about pauperizing people, "that will leave you—" She held out to the trembling old village pensioner fifty fresh one-dollar bills.

"And I have arranged," continued the divinity, quickly, for her own lips quivered and her brown eyes suddenly blurred, "if you will be so good, Mr. Perch, for you and David to give three or four more entertainments at the homes of the neighbors, before the season is over. And next winter—I am quite sure that next winter we can find plenty of people in town who will be delighted to see you and David—if—that is, if you think well of my plan? And David? Do you think David will like it?"

"Oh, madam!" said Jonathan, as he had said before—"oh, madam!"

But David stole up with slowly swishing tail and for the first time kissed Mrs. Mersey's hand. David was now quite ready to spell l-a-d-y.

The large rooms were both full when Jonathan came down in his ready-made black suit. He held himself tall and straight. His sunken eyes were brilliant, and his fingers did not tremble.

David walked beside him with dignity and quite composedly, and the two friends—the dog who had gained so much of the human, and the lonely man who had acquired something of the beautiful canine—came out together upon the little stage.

Above it, half hidden with drapery and silver-poplar boughs, there had been hung a copy of the "Praying Hands." But Jonathan did not see this; and the summer people, such as noticed it, wondered why it was there.