Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/256

Rh Then uncle left off petting Bright, and turned to him. He said Duke would have treated him roughly, if he hadn't. I never saw a creature look as satisfied as Duke did, when uncle began to card him. Bright didn't seem to care, and only gazed calmly at them."

"I've seen Duke do that again and again," said Mrs. "Wood. "He's the most jealous animal that we have, and it makes him perfectly miserable to have your uncle pay attention to any animal but him. What queer creatures these dumb brutes are. They're pretty much like us in most ways. They're jealous and resentful, and they can love or hate equally well—and forgive too for that matter; and suffer—how they can suffer, and so patiently too. Where is the human being that would put up with the tortures that animals endure and yet come out so patient?"

"Nowhere," said Miss Laura, in a low voice; "we couldn't do it."

"And there doesn't seem to be an animal," Mrs. Wood went on, "no matter how ugly and repulsive it is, but what has some lovable qualities. I have just been reading about some sewer rats, Louise Michel's rats"

"Who is she?" asked Miss Laura.

"A celebrated Frenchwoman, my dear child, 'the priestess of pity and vengence,' Mr. Stead calls her. You are too young to know about her, but I remember reading of her in 1872, during the Commune troubles in France. She is an anarchist, and she used to wear a uniform, and shoulder a rifle, and help to build barricades. She was arrested and sent as a convict to one of the French penal colonies. She has a most wonderful love for animals in her heart, and when she went home she took four cats with her. She was put into prison again in France and