Evening star., 1940-07-21
LITTLE DOG
LAUGHED
Continued from preceding pose

he'd have been as tame as an old sheep.
well, one of them had to 60.
Strictly speaking, it should have been
Gipsy. But look at it this way: Say
you've two maids; you can't keep
them both; ones sure of place, but
the other - she might find herself out
of job. in the soup. We gave Hector
to friends; we kept Gipsy."
Things went wrong after that,
said Lucy Bagot. "Gipsy felt she'd
done good dog out of home. She
showed it in all sorts of queer little
ways" There was pause. The trag-
edy, whatever it was, came closer, the
absurd little tragedy which both these
middle-aged people found it so hard
to tell and SO hard to forget. 1--WE
never knew till then," Bagot con-
tinued, ''how much she'd got in her.
Human beings can speak. They can
say. I'm sorry and there's an end
of it. But with a dog it's different.
Dogs can't talk. But dogs remember"
SHE remembered" Lucy confirmed
him. ''She showed it. One night, for
instance, she brought an old rag doll
into the drawing room. was sitting
there alone She brought it in and laid
it on the floor at my feet, as if to say.
Will this make up for Hector?
another time." Bagot went on.
"the door opened; in she marched with
white cat. A wretched beast. And he
wouldn't leave us. We didn't want
him. She didn't either But it meant
something. To make up for Hector?"
''Or there may have been another
reason" Lucy went on. That's what
l never could decide. Did she want to
give us hint? To prepare us? If only
she could have spoken! Then we could
have reasoned with her, tried to per-
suade her. As it was, we sensed all
winter that something was wrong.
"She'd fall asleep and start yelping,
as if she we're dreaming. Then she'd
wake up and run round the room with
her ears cooked, as if she'd heard
something. Often I'd 60 to the door
and look out. But there wasn't anyone.
Sometimes she'd begin trembling
all over, half afraid, half eager. Why?
If she'd been a woman, you'd have
said that some temptation was grad
ually overcoming her. There was some
thing she tried to resist, but couldn't,
something in her blood that was too
strong for her. That was the feeling
we had . . And she wouldn't 60 out
with us. There she would sit on the
hearthrug, listening, waiting. But it's
better to tell you the facts and let you
Judge for yourselves"
LUCY stopped, but Tom nodded at
her. "You tell the end," he said, for
the plain reason that he couldn't trust
himself to tell the end.
Lucy Bagot began; she spoke stiff1y,
to conceal her feelings: 1T was win
ter's evening, the sixteenth of Decem-
Der, 1887 Augustus, the white cat, sat
on one side of the fire, Gypsy on the
other. Snow was falling. All the street
sounds were dulled.
Tom said: You could hear pin
drop. It's as quiet as the country And
that, of course, made us listen. A bus
passed in a distant street. A door
slammed. One could hear footsteps re-
treating Everything seemed to be
vanishing away, lost in the falling
snow. And then we only heard it
because we were listening - whistle
sounded, a long low whistle, dwindling
away. Gypsy heard it. She looked up.
She trembled all over Then she
grinned -" Lucy stopped. She con-
trolled her voice. .-..
Next morning she was gone"