Wheels crushed the gravel and Anne going to the window saw the runabout wagon with Baldy and a strange man in it driving out of the stable yard. Between them on the bottom sat Bigness, his head almost on a level with theirs, while he strained at his collar and looked back longingly as he passed the house.
[Illustration: _Miss Muffet, Brother, and Bigness._]
Anne knew that he was to go to his new home that day. She had gone all alone to give him a parting hug that morning, and she choked as she looked at him. Tommy, meantime, was up in the hayloft having his cry out, with no other company than a white brahma hen who had stolen her nest.
Waddles sniffed, and getting stiffly down from the sofa raised himself, paws on window sill, and looked out. He saw the wagon, the men, and the dog, and he understood. He had the courtesy not to bark, but his tail wagged furiously. Then he dropped to the floor and began washing his face vigorously with his hind leg. Waddles was himself again.
Bigness went to live with little Miss Muffet and her brother at the hill farm half a day’s drive away, where he had his liberty, good eating, was their “owniest,” and was hugged to his heart’s content; but he never forgot Anne, and when she visited him he had eyes only for her, and awoke the echoes baying long after she left.
Anne was his first love, and to be the first love of a big dog is a rather serious thing and not to be lightly undertaken.
This is a chronicle of the doings of Jack and Jill the twins, pups of Waddles and Happy of Happy Hall, who, from the age of twelve days when they completely opened their eyes on the world, thought for a time, until they met experience, that it was made exclusively for themselves, according to the thinking of many two-footed children.
After the going away of Lumberlegs, Waddles’s youth came back to him. He went off on long excursions with his neighbours, bayed a juicy tenor in the quartet that led the Dogtown chorus in its practise on moonlight nights, and actually threw bones into the air and played with them as of old.
Not that he could turn as quickly, and his portliness got rather in the way as he tried to double on himself; but the spirit was there, which is the thing that counts.