Ariel Custer (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

be delivering papers to decent citizens. Tell his mother! He, a kid who got up every morning and went out on his route like a man; a kid whom the men at the firehouse spoke of as a “tough egg.” Tell his mother! He called a taunt to her that was not fit for orthodox Congregational ears to hear, and Harriet slammed her door and retired with a vanquishing air while Stubby yelped down the street with a broken foot, mourning a lost bone.

      Dick had glared at the kitchen door for a minute and then, with a look that promised future return, vaulted the fence, recovered his papers, and went wrathfully on his way. But he had not forgotten the episode though the day had been full of others. And if he had been so inclined, Stubby would have reminded him. Stubby who was his master’s shadow, never losing sight of him from sunup to sundown, now forced to an ignominious cushion with his poor foot in a bandage. Stubby who lay on the foot of his bed tenderly guarded and pampered! Stubby should be avenged!

      The dog stirred and whined in his sleep, and the boy tossed and planned, but finally decided that the offending garbage pail should be the medium through which vengeance should be done. The bone should return to the hand that flung it away. So Dick turned over and went to sleep like a cherub with Stubby’s well paw held tight in his own grubby one.

      * * * * *

      Quite early the next morning, while it was yet dark, came a sturdy shadow stealing across the backyards, across the hedges silently, skillfully, until he came within range of Harriet Granniss’s garbage pail. Carefully reconnoitering, he managed quite silently to find that bone and tie it to the doorknob. Then with a noisy clatter he flung the cover of the pail to the brick pavement, and lifting the pail from its high hook where dogs could not possibly maraud it, he sloshed the contents thoroughly and pervasively across the neat gray floor of the back porch and dropped the pail down the steps with a bum and a bang. Harriet Granniss’s head in curlers came forth impressively, but Dicky was far and away down toward the station after his early morning papers by that time, and Harriet’s demands to know who was there rang on empty air.

      It was still too dark for Harriet Granniss to see the havoc wrought, so she withdrew her head and slammed down the window when she discovered her efforts were futile, with the conviction that she had frightened the intruder away. But when at six o’clock she descended the stairs and noisily began her preparations for a virtuous breakfast, she opened the back door to take in the milk, and the whole devastated porch was revealed.

      The view of Harriet Granniss’s face when she first saw it resembled a large black storm at sea with the lightning playing over it. The blackness lasted through the breakfast hour, which began on the usual dot, in spite of the fact that both back porch and garbage pail had been duly scrubbed and were gleaming in their usual freshness. Disapproval sat heavily upon her moist, unhappy countenance, and Emily Dillon was made somehow to feel as if she were the cause of whatever trouble there was.

      Harriet announced the distress toward the close of the meal with her usual fine sarcasm: “Well, we’re beginning to get the benefit of your philanthropy at last, Emily.”

      Emily lifted sweet, dreamy eyes from a plate that was almost as well filled with creamed codfish and potatoes as when it was first passed to her, and smiled pleasantly: “Yes? How is that?”

      It was one of Harriet Granniss’s grievances that Emily never called her by her first name. She always avoided calling her at all.

      She waited until she had poured Emily’s coffee before she answered. She considered it one of her prerogatives to pour the coffee and sit in the seat of mistress, and Emily quickly let her do as she pleased.

      “You would buy morning papers of that little rat of a boy what lives up the street. Smalley, the name is. His mother is that washed-out piece that goes by here Sundays in purple. Well, you ought to have been down here this morning“Harriet spoke as if it were now nearly noon, although it had but just struck eight“you would have seen how much gratitude the little beast has. He emptied the garbage pail all over the back porch, and it was filthy! And there was a great big bone tied to the doorknob.”

      “A bone?” questioned Emily. “Whose bone?”

      “Well, I’m sure I didn’t stop to identify the bone,” snapped Harriet. “I had enough to do to get the mess cleared up before the grocery man came. It wasn’t my bone, I’m sure of that! It may have been yours, of course, if you find one missing.”

      Harriet considered this grim humor.

      “I mean,” said Emily again with a worried look, “did it come from our house? Was it a bone from our table? Our meat, you know?”

      “Well, no, I don’t suppose it was,” grudged Harriet. “What difference does that make?”

      “Not much, and yet if it was brought here for that purpose”

      “Well, no, it wasn’t brought here for that purpose. If you’ve got to know the exact ins and outs of it, it was a bone a dog brought here, and I threw a stone at him and took his bone away and put it in the garbage pail.”

      “Oh, I see.” Emily ate another bit of fried potato.

      “Well, what do you see?” snapped Harriet. But Emily remained silent.

      “I gave that dog a lesson he won’t forget soon,” crowed Harriet. “He went off yelping up the street with one foot in the air. It’s ridiculous keeping dogs in a town. They’ve no business doing it. If I had my way, all the dogs would be shot!”

      “Oh, poor fellow!” said Emily involuntarily, stopping to sip her coffee.

      “Yes, poor fellow! That’s you! I suppose you’ll be wanting to bring a dog home yourself next! But nobody need try to keep a dog around me! If you’d seen that back porch I had to scrub! But you never think of saying poor Harriet. Yes, I suppose that’ll be the next thing I’ll have to be called upon to endure. A nasty little mangy dog!”

      “Oh no!” said Emily. “I wouldn’t think of it!”

      “Well, I’m going to see that boy’s mother this morning, and believe me, she’ll learn a few things about how to bring up children. And if she doesn’t do something about making that boy apologize, I’ll report it to the police. He ought to have been made to clean up the mess. I’d have liked to rub his dirty little freckled nose in the garbage, only I didn’t want the baker to see it when he came.”

      “Oh,” said Emily, aghast, “please! I wouldn’t go to the neighbors about a thing like that! Just let it pass! It won’t likely happen again!”

      “Yes, let it pass! Let it pass! That’s you all over, Emily! No, indeed, I won’t let it pass. This is part my house, isn’t it? I do the morning work, don’t I? Well, I’m going!”

      With that she gathered her cup and plate and silver and sailed out to the sink with them, and Emily beat a hasty retreat to her room to reflect on what she could do to prevent trouble with her neighbors. She was very fond of Dick Smalley’s little dog Stubby. She often slipped Stubby a peppermint between the hedge when Harriet was out. She could read a great deal between Harriet’s lines, and she decided to slip up to Mrs. Smalley’s that morning while Harriet went to market and forestall her. Emily was fond of freckle-faced Dick Smalley. She sometimes gave him smiles when she gave Stubby peppermints.

      So Emily put on her neat black hat and coat and slipped away while Harriet went to market.