'Drop it!' says I, and he dropped it,
for he know'd he'd whipped, and he was pretty tired hisself. Then
the bull-dog, he trotted off with his tail a-hangin' down. 'Now,
then,' says I, 'them dogs will be bosom friends forever after
this.' 'Ah me!' says he, 'I'm sorry indeed that your employer, for
who I've always had a great respect, should allow you to get into
such habits.' That made me feel real bad, and I told him, mighty
quick, that you was the last man in the world to let me do anything
like that, and that, if you'd 'a' been here, you'd 'a' separated
them dogs, if they'd a-chawed your arms off; that you was very
particular about such things; and that it would be a pity if he was
to think you was a dog-fightin' gentleman, when I'd often heard you
say that, now you was fixed an' settled, the one thing you would
like most would be to be made a vestryman."
I sat up straight in my chair.
"Pomona!" I exclaimed, "you didn't tell him that?"
"That's what I said, sir, for I wanted him to know what you really
was; an' he says, 'Well, well, I never knew that. It might be a
very good thing. I'll speak to some of the members about it.
There's two vacancies now in our vestry."
I was crushed; but Euphemia tried to put the matter into the
brightest light.
"Perhaps it may all turn out for the best," she said, "and you may
be elected, and that would be splendid. But it would be an awfully
funny thing for a dog-fight to make you a vestry-man.
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