MAY 25: Saving a Tail
Evelyn rushed up to Jack as soon as he came out of school one day.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, “something is the matter with Marian. She behaves so queerly. She said she wanted to have me play with the other girls; she had something special to do at home. She really wouldn’t let me go home with her. I would have been mad only she was just too queer for anything. I don’t understand.”
“Jock was the same way; let’s go back, anyway, and see what is up.” Jock and Marian were cousins who had recently come to town.
They hurried down a street, running most of the way, and then turned down another and ran almost all of five more blocks to reach their cousins’ home.
Jack went half-way down the hall when he bumped straight into Jock coming up from the cellar. He was holding in his arms the little fox terrier Marian had bought just a week before with her birthdaymoney. The dog was only a tiny puppy still, a lovely little soft white puppy with one brown ear and one black one and two black spots on his soft white back.
“Oh, did Buster get hurt?” Jack shouted. Buster, of course, was the small, gay, naughty, happy puppy.
“No, he didn’t,” said Jock. “And it’s none of your business, anyway, even if you are our cousins.”
“That’s so,” said Marian, who came up behind Jock. “If we want to have Buster’s tail cut, it’s no one’s business but our own. It was just like you to find out somehow.”
“Going to have his tail cut?” gasped Evelyn and burst into tears.
“Yes, fox terriers look absurd with long tails,” said Jock; “every one says so. And, besides, he’ll be all well in a week, quite well.”
“And for the sake of a little style,” said Jack, his teeth clenched tightly together, “you’d let that dog suffer for a whole week. I just wish I could cut off a part of your arm, that’s what I do.”
“The bones are soft,” murmured Marian. “He’d look foolish with a tail, so every one says.”
“What do you care what every one says?” screamed Jack; “you are two horrid, cruel children, and if you don’t let that poor puppy, who has never done you any harm, and who is at your mercy, alone, you’ll never be friends of ours, and we’ll tell others of your cruelty. We mean it, too.”
And they did mean it, for they didn’t care what any one thought of them so long as they saved the puppy from being hurt.
But after Jack and Evelyn had told Jock and Marian of the suffering it would mean for Buster, of course they didn’t do such a cruel thing. They weren’t really cruel, only they didn’t know that such a thing hurt dreadfully. They had never been told the real truth, and they were glad they had heard it in time!