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Page 5
"No ragamuffin this time," she said. "Hello! It is that good-for-nothing
young Cooper fellow from the next block. They say he is a millionaire.
Well, he isn't even going to see the Flanton Dog."
The young man came swinging along, debonairly; he was whistling under his
breath. He was a dapper figure in a long coat and a silk hat, under which
the candles lighted a rather silly face. When he reached the spot in the
sidewalk where the Flanton Dog lay, he paused a moment looking down. Then
he poked the object with his stick. On the other side of the street a
mother and her little boy were passing at the time. The child's eyes caught
sight of the dog on the sidewalk, and he hung back, watching to see what
the young man would do to it. But his mother drew him after her. Just then
an automobile came panting through the snow. With a quick movement Cooper
picked up the dog on the end of his stick and tossed it into the street,
under the wheels of the machine. The baby across the street uttered a howl
of anguish at the sight. Miss Terry herself was surprised to feel a pang
shoot through her as the car passed over the queer old toy. She retreated
from the window quickly.
"Well, that's the end of Flanton," she said with half a sigh. "I knew that
fellow was a brute. I might have expected something like that. But it
looked so--so--" She hesitated for a word, and did not finish her sentence,
but bit her lip and sniffed cynically.
CHAPTER IV
THE NOAH'S ARK
"Now, what comes next?" Miss Terry rummaged in the box until her fingers
met something odd-shaped, long, and smooth-sided. With some difficulty she
drew out the object, for it was of good size.
"H'm! The old Noah's ark," she said. "I wonder if all the animals are in
there."
She lifted the cover, and turned out into her lap the long-imprisoned
animals and their round-bodied chief. Mrs. Noah and her sons had long since
disappeared. But the ark-builder, hatless and one-armed, still presided
over a menagerie of sorry beasts. Scarcely one could boast of being a
quadruped. To few of them the years had spared a tail. From their close
resemblance in their misery, it was not hard to believe in the kinship of
all animal life. She took them up and examined them curiously one by one.
Finally she selected a shapeless slate-colored block from the mass. "This
was the elephant," she mused. "I remember when Tom stepped on him and
smashed his trunk. 'I guess I'm going to be an expressman when I grow up,'
he said, looking sorry. Tom was always full of his jokes. Now I'll try this
and see what happens to the ark on its last voyage."
Just then there was a noise outside. An automobile honked past, and Miss
Terry shuddered, recalling the pathetic end of the Flanton Dog, which had
given her quite a turn.
"I hate those horrid machines!" she exclaimed. "They seem like Juggernaut.
I'd like to forbid their going through this street."
She crowded the elephant with Noah and the rest of his charge back into the
ark and closed the lid. "I can't throw this out of the window," she
reflected. "They would spill. I must take it out on the sidewalk. Land! The
fire's going out! That girl doesn't know how to build fires so they will
keep."
She laid the Noah's ark on the table, and going to the closet tugged out
several big logs, which she arranged geometrically. About laying fires, as
about most other things, Miss Terry had her own positive theories. Taking
the bellows in hand she blew furiously, and was presently rewarded with a
brisk blaze. She smiled with satisfaction, and trotted upstairs to find her
red knit shawl. With this about her shoulders she was prepared to brave the
December frost. Down the steps she went, and deposited the ark discreetly
at their foot; then returned to take up her position behind the curtains.
There were a good many people passing, but they seemed too preoccupied to
glance down at the sidewalk. They were nearly all hurrying in one
direction. Some were running in the middle of the street.
"They are in a great hurry," sniffed Miss Terry disdainfully. "One would
think they had something really important on hand. I suppose they are going
to hear the singing. Fiddlestick!"
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