Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/16

 was your wife?" but she couldn't say the words, even in her anger.

Charles persevered.

"You told me you liked dogs, Moira. You said you were used to them."

"So I do, and so I am," said Moira shortly. "But in our family dogs were slightly subordinate to the rest of the family. They didn't dominate the household. And I warn you, Charles Glenn, if that dog stays in here at night I don't. We'll sleep in separate rooms."

Charles gave in. In a rather sulky silence he put Jet outside in the passage, despite beseeching jabs at him with her forepaw. She refused to go voluntarily, and in the end had to be dragged across the room in a sitting position by her collar. Charles' lips tightened as he shut the door on her whines, but he still said nothing.

The whining kept up all night. Sometimes it rose to the pitch almost of a howl, and at others sank to a sort of sobbing; but it never stopped for more than a few minutes at a time. And all night long Moira lay quite stiff and still on her side of the bed, in the unhappy knowledge that Charles, too, was awake and unmoving.

Toward morning she must have fallen asleep. When she awoke the room was empty.

"Mr. Glenn had to go to Pembroke on business," Mrs. Bunty told her, serving her lonely breakfast in the deserted dining-room. Sunlight peered timidly through the narrow windows and lay in thin fingers on the floor. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

"Mrs. Bunty—" Moira stopped abruptly. She amended her question. "Is—is Jet about?"

Again that curious look of pity, and then Mrs. Bunty averted her eyes as she set down the teapot.

"The dog went in the car with Mr. Glenn, madam."

"Too bad." Moira helped herself to marmalade and reflected on the stupidity of last night's jealousies and irritations when examined in the morning sunlight. "I was hoping to make friends."

"If you can, madam," said Mrs. Bunty gently. "I recall the first Mrs. Glenn feeling the same. But she found, poor thing, some dogs and some people won't be made friends with."

She stood for a moment in the doorway.

"If you'll excuse me, madam, I think—it's not my place to say it—but sometimes I think it's important to know who our enemies are, at the very beginning."

The door closed very softly behind her. Moira sat staring at it for a moment, and very slowly and thoughtfully finished a piece of toast.

Strange. Very strange indeed. Dogs weren't your enemies. They were your friends. You just had to know them.

Nothing in the world more natural than that Charles should have become attached to the dog in the three years that had passed since Caroline's death. In a sense Jet had been his only companion. Charles, with his almost morbid sensitivity, would have shrunk even more than his wont from meeting other people. The dog had become the friend of his solitude. How silly of her to have resented that friendship, even for a moment! And how silly of Mrs. Bunty, to seem to suggest—

With a little impatient movement of her shoulders, Moira went out into the kitchen. Mrs. Bunty was scouring a table, her back turned. Absently Moira fingered a cup. "Mrs. Bunty, how long has Mr. Glenn had this dog Jet?"

Mrs. Bunty straightened up.

"I couldn't say exactly, madam. I know he'd had her it might be three years before he married the first time. Then it was just two years after that—"

"I know," Moira struck in hurriedly. Only she didn't know; Charles would never speak of it. "You say—you say the first Mrs. Glenn didn't care for dogs?"

The housekeeper shook her head.

"She'd one herself when she came here, a cute little thing. Jet killed it. Oh yes!—Mr. Glenn would never believe it," she added, at Moira's startled look. "But Jim Roberts' boy, from the village—he saw them, up on the moors. The two of them went out for a run that day, but only Jet came back.