Beautiful Joe

by Marshall Saunders

  A little distance ahead of us were some boys throwing sticks in the water for two Newfoundland dogs. Suddenly a quarrel sprang up between the dogs. They were both powerful creatures, and fairly matched as regarded size. It was terrible to hear their fierce growling, and to see the way in which they tore at each other’s throats. I looked at Miss Laura. If she had said a word, I would have run in and helped the dog that was getting the worst of it. But she told me to keep back, and ran on herself.

  The boys were throwing water on the dogs and pulling their tails, and hurling stones at them, but they could not separate them. Their heads seemed locked together, and they went back and forth over the stones, the boys crowding around them, shouting, and beating, and kicking at them.

  “Stand back, boys,” said Miss Laura, “I’ll stop them.” She pulled a little parcel from her purse, bent over the dogs, scattered a powder on their noses, and the next instant the dogs were yards apart, nearly sneezing their heads off.

  “I say, Missis, what did you do? What’s that stuff? Whew, it’s pepper!” the boys exclaimed.

  Miss Laura sat down on a flat rock, and looked at them with a very pale face. “Oh, boys,” she said, “why did you make those dogs fight? It is so cruel. They were playing happily till you set them on each other. Just see how they have torn their handsome coats, and how the blood is dripping from them.”

  “’Taint my fault,” said one of the lads, sullenly. “Jim Jones there said his dog could lick my dog, and I said he couldn’t—and he couldn’t, nuther.”

  “Yes, he could,” cried the other boy, “and if you say he couldn’t, I’ll smash your head.”

  The two boys began sidling up to each other with clenched fists, and a third boy, who had a mischievous face, seized the paper that had had the pepper in it, and running up to them shook it in their faces.

  There was enough left to put all thoughts of fighting out of their heads. They began to cough, and choke, and splutter, and finally found themselves beside the dogs, where the four of them had a lively time.

  The other boys yelled with delight, and pointed their fingers at them. “A sneezing concert. Thank you, gentlemen. Angcore, angcore!”

  Miss Laura laughed too, she could not help it, and even Billy and I curled up our lips. After a while they sobered down, and then finding that the boys hadn’t a handkerchief between them, Miss Laura took her own soft one, and dipping it in a spring of fresh water nearby, wiped the red eyes of the sneezers.

  Their ill humor had gone, and when she turned to leave them, and said, coaxingly, “You won’t make those dogs fight any more, will you?” they said, “No, sirree, Bob.”

  Miss Laura went slowly home, and ever afterward when she met any of those boys, they called her “Miss Pepper.”

  When we got home we found Willie curled up by the window in the hall, reading a book. He was too fond of reading, and his mother often told him to put away his book and run about with the other boys. This afternoon Miss Laura laid her hand on his shoulder and said, “I was going to give the dogs a little game of ball, but I’m rather tired.”

  “Gammon and spinach,” he replied, shaking off her hand, “you’re always tired.”

  She sat down in a hall chair and looked at him. Then she began to tell him about the dog fight. He was much interested, and the book slipped to the floor. When she finished he said, “You’re a daisy every day. Go now and rest yourself.” Then snatching the balls from her, he called us and ran down to the basement. But he was not quick enough though to escape her arm. She caught him to her and kissed him repeatedly. He was the baby and pet of the family, and he loved her dearly, though he spoke impatiently to her oftener than either of the other boys.

  We had a grand game with Willie. Miss Laura had trained us to do all kinds of things with balls jumping for them, playing hide-and-seek, and catching them.

  Billy could do more things than I could. One thing he did which I thought was very clever. He played ball by himself. He was so crazy about ball play that he could never get enough of it. Miss Laura played all she could with him, but she had to help her mother with the sewing and the housework, and do lessons with her father, for she was only seventeen years old, and had not left off studying. So Billy would take his ball and go off by himself. Sometimes he rolled it over the floor, and sometimes he threw it in the air and pushed it through the staircase railings to the hall below. He always listened till he heard it drop, then he ran down and brought it back and pushed it through again. He did this till he was tired, and then he brought the ball and laid it at Miss Laura’s feet.

  We both had been taught a number of tricks. We could sneeze and cough, and be dead dogs, and say our prayers, and stand on our heads, and mount a ladder and say the alphabet—this was the hardest of all, and it took Miss Laura a long time to teach us. We never began till a book was laid before us. Then we stared at it, and Miss Laura said, “Begin, Joe and Billy—say A.”

  For A, we gave a little squeal. B was louder C was louder still. We barked for some letters, and growled for others. We always turned a summersault for S. When we got to Z, we gave the book a push and had a frolic around the room.

  When any one came in, and Miss Laura had us show off any of our tricks, the remark always was, “What clever dogs. They are not like other dogs.”

  That was a mistake. Billy and I were not any brighter than many a miserable cur that skulked about the streets of Fairport. It was kindness and patience that did it all. When I was with Jenkins he thought I was a very stupid dog. He would have laughed at the idea of any one teaching me anything. But I was only sullen and obstinate, because I was kicked about so much. If he had been kind to me, I would have done anything for him.

  I loved to wait on Miss Laura and Mrs. Morris and they taught both Billy and me to make ourselves useful about the house. Mrs. Morris didn’t like going up and down the three long staircases, and sometimes we just raced up and down, waiting on her.

  How often I have heard her go into the hall and say, “Please send me down a clean duster, Laura. Joe, you get it.” I would run gaily up the steps, and then would come Billy’s turn. “Billy, I have forgotten my keys. Go get them.”

  After a time we began to know the names of different articles, and where they were kept, and could get them ourselves. On sweeping days we worked very hard, and enjoyed the fun. If Mrs. Morris was too far away to call to Mary for what she wanted, she wrote the name on a piece of paper, and told us to take it to her.

  Billy always took the letters from the postman, and carried the morning paper up to Mr. Morris’s study, and I always put away the clean clothes. After they were mended, Mrs. Morris folded each article and gave it to me, mentioning the name of the owner, so that I could lay it on his bed, There was no need for her to tell me the names. I knew by the smell. All human beings have a strong smell to a dog, even though they mayn’t notice it themselves. Mrs. Morris never knew how she bothered me by giving away Miss Laura’s clothes to poor people. Once, I followed her track all through the town, and at last found it was only a pair of her boots on a ragged child in the gutter.

  I must say a word about Billy’s tail before I close this chapter. It is the custom to cut the ends of fox terrier’s tails, but leave their ears untouched. Billy came to Miss Laura so young that his tail had not been cut off, and she would not have it done.

  One day Mr. Robinson came in to see him and he said, “You have made a fine-looking dog of him, but his appearance is ruined by the length of his tail.”

  “Mr. Robinson,” said Mrs. Morris, patting little Billy, who lay on her lap, “don’t you think that this little dog has a beautifully proportioned body?”

  “Yes, I do,” said the gentleman. “His points are all correct, save that on
e.”

  “But,” she said, “if our Creator made that beautiful little body, don’t you think he is wise enough to know what length of tail would be in proportion to it?”

  Mr. Robinson would not answer her. He only laughed and said that he thought she and Miss Laura were both “cranks.”

  Chapter XI

  Goldfish and Canaries

  The Morris boys were all different. Jack was bright and clever, Ned was a wag, Willie was a bookworm, and Carl was a born trader.

  He was always exchanging toys and books with his schoolmates, and they never got the better of him in a bargain. He said that when he grew up he was going to be a merchant, and he had already begun to carry on a trade in canaries and goldfish. He was very fond of what he called “his yellow pets,” yet he never kept a pair of birds or a goldfish, if he had a good offer for them.

  He slept alone in a large, sunny room at the top of the house. By his own request, it was barely furnished, and there he raised his canaries and kept his goldfish.

  He was not fond of having visitors coming to his room, because, he said, they frightened the canaries. After Mrs. Morris made his bed in the morning, the door was closed, and no one was supposed to go in till he came from school. Once Billy and I followed him upstairs without his knowing it, but as soon as he saw us he sent us down in a great hurry.

  One day Bella walked into his room to inspect the canaries. She was quite a spoiled bird by this time, and I heard Carl telling the family afterward that it was as good as a play to see Miss Bella strutting in with her breast stuck out, and her little, conceited air, and hear her say, shrilly, “Good morning, birds, good morning! How do you do, Carl? Glad to see you, boy.”

  “Well, I’m not glad to see you,” he said decidedly, “and don’t you ever come up here again. You’d frighten my canaries to death.” And he sent her flying downstairs.

  How cross she was! She came shrieking to Miss Laura. “Bella loves birds. Bella wouldn’t hurt birds. Carl’s a bad boy.”

  Miss Laura petted and soothed her, telling her to go find Davy, and he would play with her. Bella and the rat were great friends. It was very funny to see them going about the house together. From the very first she had liked him, and coaxed him into her cage, where he soon became quite at home—so much so that he always slept there. About nine o’clock every evening, if he was not with her, she went all over the house, crying, “Davy! Davy! time to go to bed. Come sleep in Bella’s cage.”

  He was very fond of the nice sweet cakes she got to eat, but she never could get him to eat coffee grounds—the food she liked best.

  Miss Laura spoke to Carl about Bella, and told him he had hurt her feelings, so he petted her a little to make up for it. Then his mother told him that she thought he was making a mistake in keeping his canaries so much to themselves. They had become so timid, that when she went into the room they were uneasy till she left it. She told him that petted birds or animals are sociable and like company, unless they are kept by themselves, when they become shy. She advised him to let the other boys go into the room, and occasionally to bring some of his pretty singers downstairs, where all the family could enjoy seeing and hearing them, and where they would get used to other people besides himself.

  Carl looked thoughtful, and his mother went on to say that there was no one in the house, not even the cat, that would harm his birds.

  “You might even charge admission for a day or two,” said Jack, gravely, “and introduce us to them, and make a little money.”

  Carl was rather annoyed at this, but his mother calmed him by showing him a letter she had just gotten from one of her brothers, asking her to let one of her boys spend his Christmas holidays in the country with him.

  “I want you to go, Carl,” she said.

  He was very much pleased, but looked sober when he thought of his pets. “Laura and I will take care of them,” said his mother, “and start the new management of them.”

  “Very well,” said Carl, “I will go then; I’ve no young ones now, so you will not find them much trouble.”

  I thought it was a great deal of trouble to take care of them. The first morning after Carl left, Billy, and Bella, and Davy, and I followed Miss Laura upstairs. She made us sit in a row by the door, lest we should startle the canaries. She had a great many things to do. First, the canaries had their baths. They had to get them at the same time every morning. Miss Laura filled the little white dishes with water and put them in the cages, and then came and sat on a stool by the door. Bella, and Billy, and Davy climbed into her lap, and I stood close by her. It was so funny to watch those canaries. They put their heads on one side and looked first at their little baths and then at us. They knew we were strangers. Finally, as we were all very quiet, they got into the water; and what a good time they had, fluttering their wings and splashing, and cleaning themselves so nicely.

  Then they got up on their perches and sat in the sun, shaking themselves and picking at their feathers.

  Miss Laura cleaned each cage, and gave each bird some mixed rape and canary seed. I heard Carl tell her before he left not to give them much hemp seed, for that was too fattening. He was very careful about their food. During the summer I had often seen him taking up nice green things to them: celery, chickweed, tender cabbage, peaches, apples, pears, bananas; and now at Christmas time, he had green stuff growing in pots on the window ledge.

  Besides that he gave them crumbs of coarse bread, crackers, lumps of sugar, cuttlefish to peck at, and a number of other things. Miss Laura did everything just as he told her; but I think she talked to the birds more than he did. She was very particular about their drinking water, and washed out the little glass cups that held it most carefully.

  After the canaries were clean and comfortable, Miss Laura set their cages in the sun, and turned to the goldfish. They were in large glass globes on the windows eat. She took a long-handled tin cup, and dipped out the fish from one into a basin of water. Then she washed the globe thoroughly and put the fish back, and scattered wafers of fish food on the top. The fish came up and snapped at it, and acted as if they were glad to get it. She did each globe and then her work was over for one morning.

  She went away for a while, but every few hours through the day she ran up to Carl’s room to see how the fish and canaries were getting on. If the room was too chilly she turned on more heat; but she did not keep it too warm, for that would make the birds tender.

  After a time the canaries got to know her, and hopped gaily around their cages, and chirped and sang whenever they saw her coming. Then she began to take some of them downstairs, and to let them out of their cages for an hour or two every day. They were very happy little creatures, and chased each other about the room, and flew on Miss Laura’s head, and pecked saucily at her face as she sat sewing and watching them. They were not at all afraid of me nor of Billy, and it was quite a sight to see them hopping up to Bella. She looked so large beside them.

  One little bird became ill while Carl was away, and Miss Laura had to give it a great deal of attention. She gave it plenty of hemp seed to make it fat, and very often the yolk of a hard- boiled egg, and kept a nail in its drinking water, and gave it a few drops of alcohol in its bath every morning to keep it from taking cold. The moment the bird finished taking its bath, Miss Laura took the dish from the cage, for the alcohol made the water poisonous. Then vermin came on it; and she had to write to Carl to ask him what do. He told her to hang a muslin bag full of sulphur over the swing, so that the bird would dust it down on her feathers. That cured the little thing, and when Carl came home, he found it quite well again.

  One day, just after he got back, Mrs. Montague drove up to the house with canary cage carefully done up in a shawl. She said that a
bad-tempered housemaid, in cleaning the cage that morning, had gotten angry with the bird and struck it, breaking its leg. She was very much annoyed with the girl for her cruelty, and had dismissed her, and now she wanted Carl to take her bird and nurse it, as she knew nothing about canaries.

  Carl had just come in from school. He threw down his books, took the shawl from the cage and looked in. The poor little canary was sitting in a corner. Its eyes were half shut, one leg hung loose, and it was making faint chirps of distress.

  Carl was very much interested in it. He got Mrs. Montague to help him, and together they split matches, tore up strips of muslin, and bandaged the broken leg. He put the little bird back in the cage, and it seemed more comfortable. “I think he will do now,” he said to Mrs. Montague, “but hadn’t you better leave him with me for a few days?”

  She gladly agreed to this and went away, after telling him that the bird’s name was Dick.

  The next morning at the breakfast table, I heard Carl telling his mother that as soon as he woke up he sprang out of bed and went to see how his canary was. During the night, poor, foolish Dick had picked off the splints from his leg, and now it was as bad as ever. “I shall have to perform a surgical operation.” he said.

  I did not know what he meant, so I watched him when, after breakfast, he brought the bird down to his mother’s room. She held it while he took a pair of sharp scissors, and cut its leg right off a little way above the broken place. Then he put some vaseline on the tiny stump, bound it up, and left Dick in his mother’s care. All the morning, as she sat sewing, she watched him to see that he did not pick the bandage away.

  When Carl came home, Dick was so much better that he had managed to fly up on his perch, and was eating seeds quite gaily. “Poor Dick!” said Carl, “A leg and a stump!” Dick imitated him in a few little chirps, “A leg and a stump!”