The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon Part 14

"They extended that note of mine at the Bank, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle.

"Don't let him eat out of ash cans, and don't let him a.s.sociate with mungles," said Mrs. Pottle.

Mr. Pottle skulked along side-streets, now dragging, now being dragged by the muscular Pershing. It was Mr. Pottle's idea to escape the attention of his friends, of whom there were many in Granville, and who, of late, had shown a disposition to make remarks about his evening promenade that irked his proud spirit. But, as he rounded the corner of Cottage Row, he encountered Charlie Meacham, tonsorialist, dog-fancier, wit.

"Evening, Ambrose."

"Evening, Charlie."

Mr. Pottle tried to ignore Pershing, to pretend that there was no connection between them, but Pershing reared up on stumpy hind legs and sought to embrace Mr. Meacham.

"Where'd you get the pooch?" inquired Mr. Meacham, with some interest.

"Wife's," said Mr. Pottle, briefly.

"Where'd she find it?"

"Didn't find him. Bought him at Laddiebrook-Sunshine Kennels."

"Oho," whistled Mr. Meacham.

"Pedigreed," confided Mr. Pottle.

"You don't tell me!"

"Yep. Name's Pershing."

"Name's what?"

"Pershing. In honor of the great general."

Mr. Meacham leaned against a convenient lamp-post; he seemed of a sudden overcome by some powerful emotion.

"What's the joke?" asked Mr. Pottle.

"Pershing!" Mr. Meacham was just able to get out. "Oh, me, oh my. That's rich. That's a scream."

"Pershing," said Mr. Pottle, stoutly, "Audacious Indomitable. You ought to see his pedigree."

"I'd like to," said Mr. Meacham, "I certainly would like to."

He was studying the architecture of Pershing with the cool appraising eye of the expert. His eye rested for a long time on the short legs and long body.

"Pottle," he said, thoughtfully, "haven't they got a dachshund up at those there kennels?"

Mr. Pottle knitted perplexed brows.

"I believe they have," he said. "Why?"

"Oh, nothing," replied Mr. Meacham, struggling to keep a grip on his emotions which threatened to choke him, "Oh, nothing." And he went off, with Mr. Pottle staring at his shoulder blades which t.i.tillated oddly as Mr. Meacham walked.

Mr. Pottle, after a series of tugs-of-war, got his charge home. A worry wormed its way into his brain like an auger into a pine plank. The worry became a suspicion. The suspicion became a horrid certainty. Gallant man that he was, and lover, he did not mention it to Blossom.

But after that the evening excursion with Pershing became his cross and his wormwood. He pleaded to be allowed to take Pershing out after dark; Blossom wouldn't hear of it; the night air might injure his pedigreed lungs. In vain did he offer to hire a man--at no matter what cost--to take his place as companion to the creature which daily grew more p.r.o.nounced and remarkable as to shape. Blossom declared that she would entrust no stranger with her dog; a Pottle, and a Pottle only, could escort him. The nightly pilgrimage became almost unendurable after a total stranger, said to be a Dubuque traveling man, stopped Mr. Pottle on the street one evening and asked, gravely:

"I beg pardon, sir, but isn't that animal a peagle?"

"He is not a beagle," said Mr. Pottle, shortly.

"I didn't say 'beagle'," the stranger smiled, "I said 'peagle'--p-e-a-g-l-e."

"What's that?"

"A peagle," answered the stranger, "is a cross between a pony and a beagle." It took three men to stop the fight.

Pershing, as Mr. Pottle perceived all too plainly, was growing more curious and ludicrous to the eye every day. He had the enormous head, the heavy body, the s.h.a.ggy coat, and the benign, intellectual face of his mother; but alas, he had the bandy, caster-like legs of his putative father. He was an anti-climax. Everybody in Granville, save Blossom alone, seemed to realize the stark, the awful truth about Pershing's ancestry. Even he seemed to realize his own sad state; he wore a shamefaced look as he trotted by the side of Ambrose Pottle; Mr.

Pottle's own features grew hang-dog. Despite her spouse's hints, Blossom never lost faith in Pershing.

"Just you wait, Ambrose," she said. "One of these fine days you'll wake up and find he has developed a full grown set of limbs."

"Like a tadpole, I suppose," he said grimly.

"Joke all you like, Ambrose. But mark my words: you'll be proud of Pershing. Just look at him there, taking in every word we say. Why, already he can do everything but speak. I just know I could count on him if I was in danger from burglars or kidnapers or anything. I'll feel so much safer with him in the house when you take your trip East next month."

"The burglar that came on him in the dark would be scared to death,"

mumbled Mr. Pottle. She ignored this aside.

"Now, Ambrose," she said, "take the comb and give him a good combing. I may enter him in a bench show next month."

"You ought to," remarked Mr. Pottle, as he led Pershing away, "he looks like a bench."

It was with a distinct sense of escape that Mr. Pottle some weeks later took a train for Washington where he hoped to have patented and trade-marked his edible shaving cream, a discovery he confidently expected to make his fortune.

"Good-by, Ambrose," said Mrs. Pottle. "I'll write you every day how Pershing is getting along. At the rate he's growing you won't know him when you come back. You needn't worry about me. My one man dog will guard me, won't you, sweetie-pie? There now, give your paw to Papa Pottle."

"I'm not his papa, I tell you," cried Mr. Pottle with some pa.s.sion as he grabbed up his suit-case and crunched down the gravel path.

In all, his business in Washington kept him away from his home for twenty-four days. While he missed the society of Blossom, somehow he experienced a delicious feeling of freedom from care, shame and responsibility as he took his evening stroll about the capital. His trip was a success; the patent was secured, the trade-mark duly registered.

The patent lawyer, as he pocketed his fee, perhaps to salve his conscience for its size, produced from behind a law book a bottle of an ancient and once honorable fluid and pressed it on Mr. Pottle.

"I promised the wife I'd stay on the sprinkling cart," demurred Mr.

Pottle.

"Oh, take it along," urged the patent lawyer. "You may need it for a cold one of these days."

It occurred to Mr. Pottle that if there is one place in the world a man may catch his death of cold it is on a draughty railroad train, and wouldn't it be foolish of him with a fortune in his grasp, so to speak, not to take every precaution against a possibly fatal illness? Besides he knew that Blossom would never permit him to bring the bottle into their home. He preserved it in the only way possible under the circ.u.mstances. When the train reached Granville just after midnight, Mr.

Pottle skipped blithely from the car, made a sweeping bow to a milk can, c.o.c.ked his derby over his eye, which was uncommonly bright and playful, and started for home with the meticulous but precarious step of the tight-rope walker.

It was his plan, carefully conceived, to steal softly as thistledown falling on velvet, into his bungalow without waking the sleeping Blossom, to spend the night on the guest cot, to spring up, fresh as a dewy daisy in the morn, and wake his wife with a smiling and coherent account of his trip.